So we're bound to linger on

[lethermindwander]

. 💀 WHO: Christine and Hancock
💀 WHERE: A small Hell town fairly close to Little Hades?
💀 WHEN: After "The Rescue"
💀 WARNINGS: NSFW, alcohol, swearing, the usual
💀 SUMMARY: Christine has caught up to her friends on the journey to find Booker. She's falling apart and trying to hide it. Until she can't.

She closes her eyes and tilts her head back. The cool, clean water engulfs her hair completely and her ears are submerged. All she can hear is the thick, dampened sound of the flowing water and it is absolutely deafening. Relaxing. Christine feels like she’s floating away. Away from her anger, her suspicions, her guilt. There is nothing except this cathartic cleansing.

Though the sensation of gentle fingertips trailing along her arms slowly coaxes her back to reality. When those long fingers entwine with her own, she lifts her head and opens her eyes to briefly gaze upon the man to whom those mystical fingers belong. How her heart aches to be near him always.

She blinks and it would seem that a smattering of moments have been lost to her. Christine hardly recalls them, her supine body now sitting upright. Her head tilts to the side as Erik presses his mangled lips against her sensitive neck. She shivers at his touch and one of his hands moves along her inner thigh until it is nestled between her legs and--

So this is what it really means to burn in Hell.

Christine thought she knew torture. Watching her son grow a little more into his true father's shadow every day, that was torture. Seeing that look of undying love in Raoul's eyes everyday and being unable to love him back with the same intensity, that was torture. Having one's body torn apart to the point of the closest thing to death, over and over, that was torture.

But in an instant, Christine realized just how naive she had truly been. How naive she had always been. Only an idiot, only a stupid, simple-minded girl would stubbornly take on a task of that nature as she had. It was pointless. Everyone around her had warned her. Everyone had known better. She should have just listened.

Because there can be no greater pain than this and there's no escaping it.

She will never see her family again. She will never see her father or her mother. She will never see Raoul or Charles. For the rest of eternity, she will be cut off from them for good reason.

She will never see Erik again, except in her dreams. And that is the greatest torture of all.

Because every single time she imagines him, she can never picture him alone. All she can see now is a pair of infernal red eyes gazing up at him with love. All she can hear is that girl’s wretched, airy little laugh and picture Erik’s arms possessively drawing her towards him. How the sound of her voice would infect him with a beastly hunger for her flesh. Oh, how absolutely captivating he must find that little rat of a girl--

Unable to contain her rage any longer, at Erik, at Lacie, at herself, Christine snaps from her lonely perch in this junkyard. She slides down the mangled hood of a totaled semi-truck and is pulling her loaded pistol from its holster before her feet hit the dusty ground. She turns on the ball of her foot and pulls the trigger, a shot ringing through the muggy air and shattering what’s left of that truck’s windshield.

She pulls the trigger again, aiming at a discarded bottle of beer. The first shot misses but her second does not. Still, this does not soothe her ravaged temper, a temper that she never had in her youth, a temper that she loathes that she now has.

A discarded mannequin is her next target. She blows off its head, then each of its arms and she unloads the rest of her cartridge into its chest. It should be noted that for a brief moment, in her rage, she imagines that hunk of plastic to be The Rose of the Requiem. Such cruel irony, that woman’s professional title. Before all of this, Christine had idly wondered if Erik himself had decided on that particular piece of marketing or if one of his various directors had come up with it.

There’s little doubt in her mind that Erik was the one that came up with it, now. She wonders if he has also read to her the story of the Nightingale and the Rose and their forbidden love that was never meant to exist.

Christine was replaced, plain and simple. By a flower that had been born red.

Christine reloads her gun and storms through the heaps of trash. She shoots an old motorcycle helmet, the faded image on a crumbling billboard. There’s little rhyme or reason and she cares very little if all this noise ends up drawing out a ferocious Hellbeast. Perhaps that is what she deserves.

She only blames herself for Erik’s indiscretions. If only she had made her decision in life sooner. If only Christine had learned how to handle herself more quickly in death. If she had been faster and stronger, he never would have had the chance to fall in love with someone else. He never would have lost faith in her. Knowing that she irrevocably loves him beyond all comprehension and knowing that Erik perhaps did not love her in the same way is her eternal punishment for being such a weak and senseless girl. This is her punishment, being forced into this position of constantly imagining Erik with someone else, it’s the only thing that’s fitting after she had undoubtedly forced Erik to imagine her with Raoul…

And now she feels more alone than ever before. Even though Elizabeth and Hancock are somewhere in this town, Christine dares not to burden them with her violent thoughts.

So she just keeps wasting her precious ammunition, hoping that each ringing gunshot will help in some way. Even though she knows full well there will be no mending of her broken heart.

Comments

[chem_break]

“She’s been gone quite a while, don’t you think?”

“Can ya blame her?”

“I suppose not… but it doesn’t stop me from worrying.”

“She needs time, Liz. And space. She’s gotta figure her shit out.”

“So if I asked you to go check on her, you’d refuse?”

“… I didn’t say that, exactly.”

“Consider it a personal favor, if you must.”

“Fine, twist my arm why don’t ya’. Just give me two minutes for a tare.”

“For a…? Oh, you mean you’re going to get high.”

“Yeah, what did ya think I meant? Forget who you’re talking to sister?”

“No, I… never mind. Just hurry up already.”

***

Hancock couldn’t properly deny that he was glad to be corralled into checking up on Christine. He had believed what he said-- but it doesn’t stop him from worrying, either. Perhaps worry is even too light a word; Hancock knows this powerful protection he feels towards this woman is displaced-- but by how much, exactly? The line is getting real blurry, and the bottom line is all too simple: he can see that she’s hurting and he aches in his chest to try and soothe her. It doesn’t seem to matter to his instincts that she isn’t exactly his; he still can’t do nothing.

But he doesn’t have to be exactly sober, either. The Jet and Mentats flow over his senses in pleasurable harmony as he cuts through the twisting streets, crisp cimmerian eyes combing every crevice and corner. He knows Elizabeth would have joined the search too, were she not still ill from their reckless race through a staggeringly irradiated sea. It covered a lot of ground in a thrifty amount of time, but the grim young woman is still paying the price. They had made it to town, but neither Hancock nor Elizabeth had yet acknowledged how close they had come to failing. They couldn’t exactly die… but out there, you glimpse fates much worse than the silent mercy of death.

Mostly Hancock looks for places that are dark and not largely occupied; the kind of space one goes to skulk when they want to escape their own skin. Not that he would know anything about that. At all. Gunshots aren't exactly uncommon either, but something in his gut has him follow. As of yet Hancock has no handy wings or otherwise helpful mutations, and he’s starting to wish Liz could be here to cover the sky part of the search.

But the gunshots keep calling. Hancock picks up his faintly wobbling steps as he is drawn closer and closer, until the narrow space between two buildings opens into a sprawling junkyard. The wire fence is rusted to nothing in places, allowing him to easily stroll through. He spots Christine behind her blazing gun and the dusk, blurred like oil paints by the stream of his high, seems to circle around her like smoke; she looks ethereal and deadly, and Hancock kicks himself for thinking how fucking beautiful she is, even like this. Hell, maybe even especially like this. What kind of fuckery is that? Christ, the last thing she needs is him going all weak in the knees because something in his pants can’t tell that this is not the woman he fell in love with.

Only, it is. And it looks like-- feels like she needs him.

The Ghoul’s gunslinger-grace makes it all too easy for him to whip out a small pistol (earlier tossed to him by scavenger-DeWitt) and take aim at a particularly shady pile of garbage. Shotguns feel most at home in his hands but they’re no good for distance, so the smaller gun will do fine enough. He feels time lag and skip and suddenly surge as the Jet’s influence begins to fade, but his shot still hits home, shattering a monstrously huge TV that looks like it might give someone radiation poisoning. The shot flew close enough to pull the air passed Christine’s face, and he wouldn’t blame her for a moment if she turned around and pointed her gun by pure instinct.

So immediately Hancock lowers the pistol and shows his palms, slipping into a disarming smile and casually tucking away his gun.

“I got that you pretty much had that handled, but that mound of garbage was lookin’ especially shifty; thought I’d cover your back, just in case.” He smirks as he saunters closer, but not too close. The wild woman has the aura of a riled cornered animal; he doesn’t fear getting bit, but what could come after. He takes a casual posture and looks her over as though she were exactly the same as the moment he held her against his chest that chaotic Halloween. Instead of immediately expecting Christine to speak, Hancock continues while producing an inhaler of jet, and lets it take the brunt of his focus for the moment.

“Liz wanted me to check up on ya’... got her worried, dig? I’m guessin’ she was thinkin’ you might not come back, but you know what? The thought didn’t even cross my mind.”

He steals a few moments to deeply inhale the hiss of mist from the small inhaler, casually as taking a sip of water, and slings the empty cartridge away into some waiting trash pile.

“Know why?” he looks at her suddenly, peering into those unyielding golden eyes. “Because you already did the hardest part. You came back. You showed your face. I knew you weren't gonna ghost after that.”

With a few more steady steps he’s not quite within arm’s reach. Suddenly, he remembers the very first night he had spent with Christine; the desperation and the loneliness badly concealed behind drunken thrill seeking (to which he was not at all opposed, for the sake of itself). He already knows what she looks like when she’s lonely. He already knows what she looks like when she feels abandoned. He already knows what she looks like when she’s irrevocably hurt.

It feels like some kind of cheat to be able to see these things now. It drives him relentlessly to hold her, to kiss her, to comfort her how a lover can--
--but that’s not fair to her. He can’t inflict his selfishness on her anguish; so the hunger to soothe her is quiet behind his seamless gaze.

“So you gonna talk, or what?” he proads with gentle friendliness. "No shame in takin' a booze break first, either."

[lethermindwander]

At the sound of his gunshot, she wheels around and takes aim at the source with little thought at all. Her hair is wild, still singed and there's still healing burns trailing from the side of her head down her cheek and neck, down underneath her dark clothing. The look in those glowing eyes is dangerous, a crackling fire sitting behind them, ready to consume anything in her way.

She hurts so deeply that she doesn't even know how to handle it; Attacking Hancock out of misplaced fury seems, for a moment, a good idea.

Christine is suddenly angry that he's not her Hancock. That he can't just magically make this better with an offhand comment, "Hey, remember that one time we..." Because all her memories of him don't match up to his memories of her and that is so fucked up.

And yet her heart still jumps in her chest when she sees him smile.

After a little too long, she finally lowers her gun, oblivious to the fact that he has seen her exactly like this before.

"We're all ghosts, now," Christine says quietly, her eyes still boring down into Hancock's. Her mind keeps replaying all the cruel things she had screamed at Erik in the moment, all the cruel things he responded with-- That was truly the end, wasn't it? After everything Christine has done for him, done because of him...that was the end of it all.

She'll never see him again and she seems to be stuck on that thought. When she had been alive and he had been dead, she had the hope of the afterlife to cling to. Now, there's just...nothing. She always followed him. He would never follow her.

But Hancock followed her.

Even if it was at Elizabeth's insistence, the gravity of that is not lost on Christine and she doesn't know what to do or what to say about that, either.

"What's there to talk about? I thought I covered everything the first time?" She growls, lashing out without meaning to. A moment later, after this dawns on her, Christine sighs and turns away. She doesn't want to look at Hancock but she knows there will be no getting rid of him, stubborn asshole. She shakes her head and tries to fight off the burning in her chest, she won't start crying about this again, she won't.

"Everything I've ever wanted is just--It's gone. I fucked it up. I did the right thing and then I ruined everything-- No, I wasn't the one lying for months and months. I wasn't the one that was unfaithful. It didn't fucking matter what I felt for you--other you, I was never going to act on it because of Erik. But he goes behind my back, he's been going behind my back this whole goddamn time and I, I should blame him for everything but I don't. This was my fault somehow and I...I don't know what to do. For twenty years I've had one, singular focus and it's...it's all gone now. In an instant. Poof, watched it float up into the sky with the ashes of all my fucking feathers," Christine starts ranting and raving, the pain more clearly evident with each of her words. It's not often that she uses foul language in a language everyone around her will understand...All thoughts of manners have flown right the hell out a window.

"But you're here," she says a touch quieter. Something is dawning on her and Christine isn't sure if she wants to acknowledge it at all. Suddenly, it is all she can think about.

[chem_break]

Ghosts, huh? Well, he can’t exactly blame her for her morbid mood, all things considered.

This is all wrong; this casual comfort in the face of Christine’s wild dangerous remorse, it comes from another person, another time, another life. But what the hell is he supposed to do? Turn away? Pretend he doesn’t understand? That he doesn’t want to help? Is he even capable of that?

Christine’s snappish growl does nothing to offend him; girl’s gone half nuts, and with fucking fair reason. Besides, it takes more than that to get under his rad-resistant skin.

“Anything you want; looks like ya got a thing or two on your mind,” chemical chill is such a wonderful haze to get lost in; warning uneasy thoughts muffled out by the glee of riding the buzz. He doesn’t really need it to talk to Christine like this… more so to help him cope with his own selfish, instinctive reactions.

Because honestly he would cut up a bitch for Christine, no questions asked. His Christine, this Christine… it begins to matter less and less. But he already knows the woman’s heart is tangled inseparably from Erik’s, because he saw how the man’s death damn near killed her. Maybe the devilish lady before him wouldn’t appreciate him flying off the handle, murdering folks on her behalf.

Maybe they're both trying to find comfort in the wrong place; it feels almost inevitable that the spark will soon reach the powder keg; that something is about to happen, that maybe shouldn’t. They’re already in Hell, now all he needs is the handbasket. As the rattled demoness begins to speak, Hancock is very particular about keeping his hand in his pockets as he drifts a few steps closer. So she did have feelings for the Other him… but is --was-- still tangled up with this Erik guy?

“Hey, if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s Erik’s. You were sorting your shit out with me --other me-- but he… well, feelings are one thing, but he crossed a fuckin’ line that thier ‘aint no walkin’ back from,” his gravelly growl carries a fiery streak of protectiveness. Yeah, maybe it’s displaced, but he can’t do nothing when she’s hurting. He can’t do nothing. He doesn’t want to delve into what could have happened with this Christine and her Hancock, because it sure as hell won’t make anything better.

“In my opinion, you rocked the whole Trial by Fire thing. You’re tough-- tougher than ya think you are, and now guess what? You’re fireproof, too.” The poor woman is starting to crumble, and though seeing her resilience may not comfort her, he’d like to remind her it’s there. His concern for Christine and his itch to protectively crack some skulls are evident upon his face, charcoal eyes somehow managing various tones of expression.

“Yeah, nowhere better,” he mumbles, half affection, half shame. “Maybe here, with you-- but inside a bar, too. Relationships are about compromise, right?” he jests to nudge attention away from his first statement. All he wants is to touch her-- to just put his hand on her shoulder. The comforting haze of highness muffles any reasons that he shouldn’t.

“You ain’t gettin’ rid of me; guess that’s just one more piece of bad luck.”

He means to grip her shoulder-- he does, but if Christine will let him, Hancock will draw her against his chest, arm slung around her shoulders in a casual impromptu hug.

[lethermindwander]

He’s right, something is about to happen.

She listens to his words, though she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to hear the truth in them. She’s about to come to a realization that she never wanted to have, that she never believed could be true.

Christine flinches at Hancock’s hand on her shoulder. Any sort of tenderness feels out of place, her skin twitches like it’s burning. There’s an instinct in her gut to pull away, to run off and hide somewhere that the light can’t force her to face this new reality. She doesn’t want his comfort, at least that’s what her mind keeps telling her she wants, yet she doesn’t push away when he pulls her against him. It’s not a tight or overbearing embrace, it doesn’t make her feel like she’s trapped. That smoky smell that lingers around him draws her in and her ragged breaths start to calm.

This is why Christine fell in love with him.

While Erik could only ever see her and feel guilty for the person she became, Hancock has only ever seen her as a force of nature. Every time she has ever felt ashamed for the darkness that has taken root around her soul, Hancock has been the one to remind her of the light. She’s still a good person. What makes a person an angel or a demon is arbitrary.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Her voice is still quiet, but Christine lets her head fall against his chest. Her cheek winds up nestled between the split fabric of his shirt, skin just barely against skin. Her arms wrap around his middle and clutch the back of his coat.

She can’t stop her thoughts anymore, they gurgle up from the depths of her mind.

In Mnemosyne, when Christine had been at her wit’s end in her search for Erik, she visited a soothsayer. She’d been slightly drunk and desperate for something. For any sort of clue, any sort of lead at all, even one as foolish as a fortune teller with exorbitant prices. It would be something.

She had asked the old woman if she’d ever find her lover. She asked the woman if she was heading the right direction.

”To the North, you will find what you seek.”

“I’ll find my husband, then?”

“You will find he who follows.”

At the time, Christine had assumed that the woman had meant Erik. Who else could it have been? Raoul? She wouldn’t dare dream of sweet Raoul subjecting himself to the tortures of Hell for her sake. The old woman’s predictions had come true in the end...heading North, Christine had then stumbled upon information that had eventually led her to Little Hades.

But Erik was not the only man she had found in Little Hades.

Christine squeezes her eyes shut, trying to prevent herself from crying. Everything she ever thought she believed has just been flipped upside down. Her world is crumbling, her reality is shaking and that spark is landing on the powder keg.

Erik is not the one who follows.

All this time, this entire journey, is it possible that it had been leading her to Hancock this whole time? Twice, she had found him, in the same damn town. What were the odds of that? Among hundreds of billions and trillions of souls rotting in Hell...she found Hancock twice.

She doesn’t want to believe it. She shakes her head, just burying her face deeper against Hancock’s mottled skin. For most of her life, she had thought Erik to be her soulmate, if such a thing existed. The facts however, can not save her from any sort of hopeful notion. Erik had lied to her. For months. Had been having some sort of relationship with another woman for months. Of all the terrible things he had done in his life, Christine had never thought him capable of cruelty on that level. With his undying devotion, she assumed that he would follow her to the end of existence. How naive of her to believe that.

But Hancock followed.

Time and time again, in the short span she has known him, he has followed. She isn’t his Christine, he isn’t her Hancock, but suddenly that fact isn’t important at all. Maybe, in a twisted way, it’s almost poetic.

She lifts her head and looks up into his dark eyes. Christine can see her own haunted reflection staring back at her.

This revelation can’t be true. This isn’t how she wanted her story to go, it was supposed to be her and Erik, until the end of existence itself, not her and this man from another world. Yet, Christine can’t shake the feeling that this is true. He’s here--and he even just admitted! There will be no getting rid of him.

Only one way to discover the truth, right?

One hand comes forward and covers his cheek. Her fingers move along his scarred skin, her thumb touches the corner of his lips and Christine hardly has any idea what she’s doing. It’s the only thing that seems to make sense. The only way she’ll figure out if this revelation is anything at all.

She pulls his lips down to hers with a wicked swiftness. Her kiss is bruising, desperate and searching. Her lips glide against his, her bottom lip getting trapped between his. Fire scorches her veins and she has to pull away. Her golden eyes fill with panic, she gasps for breath and for a moment it might look like Christine is about to run away.

Because there’s only one other kiss that’s ever shaken her to her very core.

[chem_break]

“I gotcha’,” his rasping voice is softly composed as he shepherds Christine against his chest; when her head thumps softly against him, he lets out a slow breath he had not realized he’d been holding. This… this is fine. It doesn’t cross any lines; maybe he could get through this without making any stupid mistakes. It seems almost possible, until his chemical addled brain skips and shifts focus to the deeply satisfying way her smaller form fits against him; so familiar, and yet so different. He should stop thinking about it-- stop enjoying it so damn much.

Jesus does he want to punch this Erik guy in the face right about now; he’d heard the stories from Liz by now, Constants and Variables, blah, blah, blah, but the fine details and semantics of what happened to Christine doesn’t matter to him; someone she loved betrayed her, and there’s no outrunning that pain.

(Well, maybe briefly, and with the right chemical cocktail.)

But before his temper can get into the meat and marrow of this line of thinking, Christine gazes upon his face and he falls into those fiercely golden eyes; eyes he has only ever seen from this woman; a unique trait that somehow doesn’t make her into a stranger, despite the stark difference. Hancock sees the same pain there, the same heartbreak and sense of dysphoria, like familiar cursive on a different page. He’s about to grumble something about what an idiot her husband-not-husband is, but the hand on his cheek causes him to still.

His lids sink a fraction down his dark eyes as those seeking fingers trace his savaged skin; when her thumb touches the corner of his mouth, the sudden all consuming thought that she is about to kiss him eats up all the processing power of his hazy mind; it’s impulse (or perhaps, muscle memory?) that causes his tongue to sweep briefly across his own scarred lips in instinctive anticipation. It’s easy to suffocate all the reasons this shouldn’t happen with how badly he wants it to. And that’s selfish, but damn, he’s already in Hell.

When her lips finally crash against his own something cracks the dam of his brittle self control; his arms tighten around her a few fractions, a deep savoring growl rumbling quietly in his throat as he responds with equal fever, as though he had been biting the bit to be unleashed. His seemingly scorched yet devilishly dexterous fingers slide their strange texture along Christine’s skin as Hancock cradles the back of her neck and draws her closer; there is a slow burn to his affections; carnal and possessive but not overbearing or mad. Not selfishly forceful.

But not without a smouldering hunger. As the moments pass between damp breaths and the fevered press of their lips, Hancock feels the heat beneath his skin rising, and his pulse begins to throb like a viciously struck drum.

Despite the hellishly default heat, his lips feel suddenly cold as the skittish edgey woman reels back. His hands settle firmly but lightly on her shoulders; he can be easily shrugged off, but his touch is a token of his support and affection.

“Whoa, hey, it’s alright,” he says steadily, seeking out to meet her eyes once more. Even though nothing is alright, because now his mind has something to eagerly fixate on. A texture, a taste, a hunger and desperation that mirrors his own. His heart trashes against his ribcage,“Don’t go ditching me now, okay?” he speaks with a small wry smile, though his tone is soft beneath it. His tongue skates across his lips once more, and his dark eyes sink shut for half a moment as he tastes her on his skin. “I… wasn’t exactly complainin’ you know,” he admits, quietly sheepish and guilty beneath a front of of playful teasing and honest blood-deep pleasure.

This is spinning so far beyond control; as much as he knows this is a bad idea he can’t seem to make it stop-- to leave her side, even when he knows there’s going to be collateral. It feels as inevitable as gravity dragging him through a freefall towards the crushing ground.

And fucking up has never felt so good.

Hancock eases into Christine’s space one more, slowly allowing his arms to slide around her; one at her hip and one around her ribs. He holds her like she is the most precious thing to him, keeping her gaze with his cracked obsidian eyes for a few long moments.

“So… I’m up for something reckless and stupid, you?” he can’t quit the grin that creeps across his mouth as he leans a little closer, tasting the thin air crammed in the very narrow space between them.

Ah to Hell with with it. Oh wait, already there.

[lethermindwander]

He tastes like fire. Fire and smoke and dirt and whisky.

Christine looks up at him, lips parted, her eyes full of shock and longing that she can’t quite put into words. Words keep slipping through his lips and Christine can hardly comprehend them.

Feeling like she’s burning from the inside out, she can’t quite figure out what to do with her hands. As his settle on her shoulders, she loosely wraps her fingers around his wrists. She could push him away, yes. That’s the opposite of what she really wants, though.

She’s standing on another cliff, unsure if she can jump off the edge.

“I’m not, I’m not going anywhere,” she whispers, the words leaving her without much thought at all. She wants this. There’s no reason to feel guilty for what she wants when there is no one to answer to except herself.

That’s the beauty of Hell, right? No more expectations, no more rules, no more cages. Nothing but chaos and freedom.

Her eyes dart between his, trying to find any sign that Hancock might be toying with her, that his words and actions and gestures might mean anything other than what they are at face value. There’s an ache in her chest not to trust him, not to trust that his intentions are true. It’s her last ditch attempt to find a reason not to be selfishly reckless.

But when has Hancock ever been sadistically manipulative?

Her arms circle around his shoulders when his hands pull her flush against his body. She wants this, consequences be damned. Though really, what else could go wrong? A lot, really. But there’s so much more that could finally go right.

She kisses him again but this time, Christine doesn’t pull away. She surges forward with enough force to knock his precious tricorn right off his head. Her palms seize his face to lock their lips together. Rough and wild, her lips move against his. She briefly bites his bottom lip and slides her tongue along his hot, scarred skin.

He tastes like Hell.

He tastes like everything she’s been running towards.