Chapter Text
Part of him wishes Fragile was to blame. It would be easier to deal with, this torment, if he had someone to blame, someone to be angry at. Someone’s name to scream at the black sky until his throat was hoarse and raw, but however much he wants it to be somebody else’s fault, the fact of the matter is that this - his fate, this beach, everything it represents - this is all because he himself had pulled the trigger.
Higgs doesn’t need to think about it to remember the sharp, burning pain as the bullet shattered his skull, or the weightless bliss following it. Talk about a killer headache - even now it aches, a dull throbbing he can’t shake regardless of how many times he tries to wash himself clean in the cold grey water that laps at the sand beneath his feet. Blood turns the water red. Red - the only splash of colour in this bleak place. Higgs wishes it were completely black and white. Red is the colour of loss, now, it’s red that brought him into this whole mess. Red that painted the beach and splattered across Fragile’s pretty face. Yes, Higgs thinks he’d be more inclined to tolerate his eternal damnation if the colour red simply stopped existing.
What a sick joke this all is, honestly. Whoever pulls the strings beyond the thin veil that separates what humans know and what they don’t is a sick fuck, because not even Higgs could have dreamt up an afterlife worse than this one. This beach stretches on for miles - infinite yards of immaculate black sand dotted with corpses of sea creatures that never lived to begin with. This is Higgs’ beach, not theirs. While it would be a bittersweet sentiment, the idea that the corpses used to be alive and as such perhaps Higgs is not as alone as he thought, the fact of the matter is that they are simply part of the scenery. Nothing more than simulacra waiting to be brought to life; clay figures lying in wait until such a time they are needed. Touching them offers a belching slew of tacky ink-coloured tar, bursting forth from their bellies like an overripe boil until nothing remains but a pool of gag-inducing stink and flakes of dark residue that flutter to the ground in spirals much too gentle for their origin. Blacks and whites and greys form the ridges and hills of a land he can never reach, tall and jagged and somehow more inviting than the small expanse of sand Higgs can occupy. He learned shortly after waking up here there is nothing to explore. It doesn’t matter where he walks, or how long, he always ends up right back where he started. A scientific marvel such as this endless loop would probably be enough to get some of the science nuts back home to jizz in their shorts - after the fiftieth time Higgs walked the infinite loop he thinks sitting through a four hour long lecture given by a scientist who took public speaking lessons from the fucking Swedish Chef would be more exciting than passing the same decomposing crab thirty times a day. Wait, no, he can’t even say day anymore, so scratch that last bit, because there is no such thing as day or night here, just “Slush Grey” and “Slush Grey But With More Fog”. When the fog rolls out Higgs tries his best to close his eyes and shut out the world, what with sleep apparently not being a thing anymore. If anyone was around to listen he’d still call it “sleeping”, but in truth it’s more a process of suffocating himself with his cape to block out the watery light and attempting to keep his eyes shut.
Sometimes, when he sleeps, or whatever it is his body does now, Higgs dreams in vivid detail of the moment in which he took his own life. It wasn’t...entirely up to him. If it were he wouldn’t be here now, he’d be sitting pretty on a throne of Bridges’ broken remains. Maybe taking a long, slow look at that porter’s pretty face - Sam, oh, Sam, the bastard who triumphed over him - before blowing it open with a loaded pistol. Let the blood run in rivers down into the ground. Let the colour red have a new meaning. A better meaning.
Too bad it’s Higgs who got his head blown to shit instead.
Thinking about it is somehow worse than actually experiencing it. It’s like he’s watching a recap of “10 Times Higgs Monaghan Absolutely Sucked At His Job”, given that whenever he thinks about it a lovely slideshow of equally disastrous memories play somewhere in the background.
...Okay, maybe not entirely equal, but comparable in numerous regards. Getting eaten by his own BT was a close second. (In his defence Amelie gave him next to no instruction on controlling the damn thing the first time he summoned it, which meant he didn’t know trying to tame it like a dog was a bad idea. Rest in peace, whoever lived in that tiny settlement and the twelve birds that had been in a nearby pond. Sorry for the voidout.) Blasting his own face open...don’t think he can fuck up worse than that.
His hand had touched Fragile’s when she aimed the gun at him; it’s a weird detail to remember, honestly, given everything that played out before and after that moment, but somehow it’s that tiny, inconsequential millisecond that stands out in an otherwise blurry picture. That wasn’t to say nothing else was worth remembering. Fragile seemed...mournful, almost, and it’s taken Higgs this long - however long it’s been, time isn’t exactly linear in purgatory - to realize what the saddened look in her eyes meant. They’d been friends, once, a long time ago. Fragile hadn’t been looking at the terrorist king when she aimed that gun. She’d been looking at Higgs Monaghan, friend and partner, the man she confided in, the man who made her laugh with terrible puns and bad innuendos, the man she trusted and loved above all else. It was a look of grief, one someone might adopt while observing an open casket at a funeral. Higgs didn’t like the implication of that thought at all . “Look how far we’ve come,” she’d said, in a tone that perhaps was intended to be scornful, but came out tired and somber. Higgs had touched the gun’s muzzle, let their fingers linger together for just a moment, and then pulled away from the last human touch he’d ever feel. “See you next time ‘round,” Higgs had responded, in as steady a voice he could muster with the cool muzzle of a gun pressed to his temple. Fragile had turned cold at that; he saw it in her shoulders, the way she tensed like a cat about to strike. “No,” she hissed, “This is it, Higgs. I’d ask if you had last words, but I don’t want to hear them. Let’s just get this over with.”
Except that Higgs did have last words. It just took him a moment to find them. They felt like barbed wire in his throat, tearing his flesh and tongue as he managed to stammer them out through the black tears that had begun to streak his face. He couldn’t tell if they were due to genuine emotion or leftover tar. Either way they stung like a bitch. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, Fragile.”
The safety clicked off. Fragile’s porcelain skin glimmered with wet, crystalline tears. “Fuck you,” she’d spat, and Higgs pulled the trigger.
Since then, each time Higgs closes his eyes he dreams that moment over and over. The bang of the gun and the darkness that followed. How long had he floated, drowned in that endless sea, before finally sand met his flailing limbs and he washed up here, on this cursed place, to torment himself until the end of time and after? How long has it been since then, stranded here, bored and alone, with nothing to do and nobody to talk to? He may not have been the most social person in life, but by god he could use a friend right about now. The BTs that he can still, for some reason, summon, do little to edge away his isolation. It disgusts him to even think it but those pathetic things fill him with a monstrous hunger that gnaws at his stomach and into his throat; burns his tongue and lips, induces tremors that wrack his whole body. It’s not a hunger for food. Higgs hasn’t needed food since Amelie took him in. It became a novelty, really, something to pass the time. His taste didn’t just disappear, he still liked to eat, he just...didn’t need to. It was the chiralium, the tar and BTs that kept him fueled… They were his lifeline. Literally. No, it’s not a hunger for food. It’s a hunger for power. He aches to feel it again, have it coarse through his veins but there’s nothing, only weak BTs and salty water. Higgs tried to drain one of them, dissolve that sweet black chiral energy into his bloodstream, but it brought only a wave of nausea so horrible he thought he might die again, and when that passed he was more hungry than ever. After all this he’s beginning to think that maybe staying on the Beach would have been the better option; at least there he wouldn’t be turning savage from lack of chiral matter. At least there he’d be able to hear his heart beat in the silence that accompanies every Beach known to man. Here it’s just...nothing. No breathing disrupts the quiet, his heart doesn’t pound in his ears when a signature bout of rage boils over, it’s just...quiet. Always so, so quiet.
It’s enough to make anybody lose their mind.
“He's got the whole world in his hands,” Higgs warbles for the fiftieth time that rotation, “He's got the whole fucking world in his hands, he's got the whole wide world in his hands…” Thunk. A round stone hits a jagged boulder and falls into the soggy sand below. “Got the whole world...in his hands...” The sand squelches under his boots. Each footprint he leaves is quickly washed away by the waves. Everything is always washed away - footprints, gouges left by a stick, the black vomit Higgs heaves up every time he shrieks into the endless sky and raises BTs from their oil slicks. He imagines he looks like a nightmare, hair turned white, eyes wild, black, oily goo oozing from his eyes and mouth. It’s been who knows how long since he’s actually seen his reflection. Ghosts don’t have one, a reflection, and he’s reminded of that every day. Reminded of it now, when he stoops down to retrieve his water smoothed rock and finds clear grey skies reflected back at him in the wet black sand. He’s simply not there, erased from reality both here and in the land of the living. Not even good enough for a goddamn reflection. A ball of tight heat unfurls in his stomach, rising into his throat tasting of bile as his fingers curl into the wet sand. Anger - a familiar emotion nowadays. Usually the only one.
“FUCK!” He yells into the cold empty air, that ugly thing called rage rearing its head once again. “FUCK!” His boot digs into the sand and he flings wet gobs of earth into the unforgiving ocean, crying black tears and howling curses to the wind. “IS THIS NOT ENOUGH? IS IT TOO HARD TO JUST LET ME DIE? ” Higgs drops to his knees, sinking a little into the wet sand. Blood from his damaged skull drips steadily into the water, blooming like little flowers in the dirt. They’re washed away, too. “Please,” he whispers, the rage gone just as suddenly as it had come, “Please just let me go.”
“Look how far we’ve come.”
Fragile’s voice cuts through the silence. Higgs raises his tear-stained face and his atrophied heart starts itself just to go into cardiac arrest - she’s standing there, with the gun in her hand, watching him with those sad eyes. Not a memory or a hallucination - she’s really there, the sand depresses beneath her feet, there’s a shadow where she stands…even whatever substitutes as the sun here glints off the gun cradled in her arms. Higgs feels his throat close up and his brain go through every possible emotion known to man. He’s surprised to find that of all of them, the one on top is, of all things, relief. He’s relieved Fragile is here, even though she’s preparing to kill him, but if she’s here then it means Higgs isn’t totally alone. Sure, the words she just spoke are eerily similar to what she said right before Higgs became a super-gory version of blood pudding, but Fragile’s all about that word play. Right? Ignoring the fact that this is how it happened - this is an exact reenactment of the second it happened, with Higgs on his knees and Fragile looking down at him. This could just be a fun, sort of effed up rescue attempt. Maybe she felt guilty, or they needed him to stop Amelie, or...okay, slew of thoughts pause for just a second. Fragile’s hands are shaking, and Higgs is transfixed, even as she pushes the muzzle against his forehead hard enough to bruise. The first time this happened, when it happened for real, Higgs was frozen as he is now, out of fear. Or something similar. Now he’s just confused, and resigned, because really, once you dream about your own death every time you close your eyes it gets a little bit old, even if your murderer is suddenly standing in front of you. “Fuck,” Higgs sighs. His head drops forward to rest on the gun. Is this stage two of his torture? Having to actually live out his death? Figures. “Just pull the damn trigger.”
Fragile does not. She stays exactly where she is, same sour expression, for a solid few seconds. Then she speaks - “No,” she snaps, “This is it, Higgs. I’d ask if you had last words, but I don’t want to hear them. Let’s just get this over with.”
God fucking-
Of course.
Of-fucking- course.
Fragile isn’t really here - why would she be? This really is just some screwed up, hyper realistic hallucination.
Higgs throws his head back and groans as loud as he can muster. Fragile does not react. Stupid, he thinks, stupid! Why would she come back for you?
She wouldn’t. That’s the hard truth, as much as it hurts to admit. The days of comfortable companionship are long past. They’ve been over since Amelie stepped her high-heeled foot into Higgs’ dreams. Fragile probably threw a party after he died. Her and Sam probably cheered and set off fireworks and the whole of Bridges probably gave them medals for it. Being resurrected and hailed as a hero would be more likely than his ex-partner coming to rescue him.
Better get this over with. “I’m sorry,” he says, because hell, he’s got nothing better to do then play his part. “I’m so sorry, Fragile.” (He doesn’t want to admit it, but this time is just as sincere as the first, if not more. He’s begging this time. For his life, or even final, true death - anything that gets him out of this hellscape.) Higgs can’t tell if his hand moves by his own will or someone else’s, but it moves regardless, coming up to graze the rifle as Fragile’s finger twitches on the trigger. She draws a shuddering breath, hands fidgeting to get a solid grip, even as the gun trembles with her failing effort to keep it aimed at Higgs’ head. “It’s okay,” he reassures her, because he didn’t get to the first time. “It’s alright. Do it, amour .” Fragile gasps heavily. There are tears threatening to spill down her face. They fall in slow motion, splashing to the sand so fiercely Higgs half expects the water already on the ground to freeze at their impact; but it doesn’t, and Fragile’s raw emotion is lost in the waves. Her throat bobs as she swallows. Higgs falls into muscle memory from when this happened so long ago, on a different beach. His eyes flutter closed, and his hand drifts up the barrel of the rifle to breech, until he feels Fragile’s bare hand, rough with age, upon the trigger. He bats it away and grasps it himself just as Fragile realizes what he’s doing. “Fuck you,” she gasps, and it ends just as it always does. Except...
Except this time, Higgs watches himself pull the trigger.
He sees the spray of gore burst forth in perfect tandem with the bullet, which buries itself at Fragile’s feet. Thick, fleshy gobs of red splatters across the smooth ground, broken up here and there by splinters of bone. Higgs’ bone. His skull, to be precise, that’s his skull and brains plastered all over the ground. Higgs watches as his eyes go glassy, staring sightlessly at Fragile. Her horrified gaze holds Higgs’ dead one as he topples backwards. A cartoonishly red arch of blood follows him down, down to the wet sand and the waves, dousing Higgs’ still face and trickling into the water, where it spirals into tiny eddies and dissipates into nothing. Higgs, from his front row seat of his own suicide, turns away just in time for an influx of nausea to sweep over him and gush from his mouth in a geyser of black oil. He hacks it all out into the sand, choking and spitting out the viscous liquid until his mouth is dry and all that is left is a faint taste of rot lingering on his tongue.
What happens next is something he doesn’t remember.
Fragile lets her duffel bag drop to the ground, and she follows suit, kneeling down in the wet sand next to Higgs’ prone body. Tears are flowing freely down her face now as she reaches out and brushes sticky locks of hair away from his bloodied face. She’s silent as she moves, gathering Higgs up in her lap so his head rests in the crook of her arm. Her free hand scoops handfuls of water over his face, rinsing it free of any left over gore. Her movements are gentle, almost motherly. Pinkish water trickles down to soak into the black sand. As she draws her hand away, her fingers touch his eyelids, closing his sightless eyes for a final time. When she’s done, and Higgs is clean save for the sizable hole through his temple, Fragile hugs his cooling body close to her chest and cries, hard enough her sobs wrack her lithe frame. “Oh, Higgs,” she whispers, “I’m sorry. We should never have let this happen to us.”
The lilting melody of Fragile’s voice dwindles as, like a mirage, her body slowly fades away, taking Higgs with her until only a faint pink circle remains, and then that too is washed away by the tide. Higgs - the real Higgs, or what’s left of him - grasps desperately at the unravelling threads of whatever apparition just appeared before him. “No no no nononono,” he begs, lunging for the last bit of light just as it evaporates.
He faceplants into the sand.
Higgs doesn’t attempt to hold back the tears this time, lets them fall, fall onto the sand and mix with the foamy white waves. He rolls onto his back, staring up at the gloomy sky with eyes darkened by smudged kohl and tar. His pale skin is a stark contrast against the deep grey-black of the sand. For a moment he lays there, the image of Fragile rocking his cooling corpse against her chest freshly imprinted against his mind’s eye.
Higgs tilts his head back and screams.
The anguished cry rips through his purgatory. Great cracks in the land split open as black tar bubbles and spits its way out, oozing and twisting its way into half-formed shapes, shapes with teeth and hands and nothing else, shrieking and wailing with voices so horrible the bravest man would turn tail and run. Higgs screams until the ground is painted black with oil and his eyes overflow with tar. His body leaves the ground in one swift motion, jerking upright like a puppet with a destructive puppeteer, and he spreads his arms wide as black rain pours down from the clouds gathering above his head. Feral BTs claw and skitter their way around below his feet, tar sloshing from their rabid movements. For a moment something within him surges, a wild call from the other side. The living side. It bites and claws at his insides, familiar in its aggression from all those times he repatriated.
And just as Higgs feels power coursing through his veins once again, everything stops.
He falls.
Slowly, he crumples like his puppeteer has sliced his strings.
He hits the ground and everything goes black.
***
Are you scared?
“A little bit. Is that okay?”
Of course it’s okay. You are doing so well, it is okay to be a little bit scared. Take a breath for me, yeah?
“Okay. Will it hurt?”
No. Just like falling asleep. And dreaming. Of something beautiful.
“Daddy says it isn’t beautiful. I...what if it’s scary?”
Do you want to stop?
“...No. No! I can do this. It isn’t rocket science.”
You’re right, love, it isn’t. Ready?
“Yeah. I’m ready. I’m gonna reach out.”
Good luck.
***
Two hundred. Two hundred one, two hundred two, two hundred three... one after another, pebbles plunk into the distant waves, disturbing the water for a brief, fleeting second and then dissipating into nothing. Two hundred four. Two hundred five. A constant rhythm, shrouded by the ever blowing wind and its song that shrilly sings through the mountains. Two hundred six. Two hundred seven. A larger stone flies through the air this time, landing with a satisfying splash a couple yards away. The ripples last a little longer than the smaller rocks. It’s still lamentably dull. As he draws his hand back once more, preparing to hurl yet another stone into the water, a vice seems to latch around his hand and stops him from moving it further. Higgs feels a tug from within his chest; a burgeoning paranoia that somewhere, somehow, someone is watching him. It grows and spreads throughout his entire body, itching at his eyes, his hands. The rock slips from his grasp and thuds to the sand below. For a single, brief second he swears the wind ceases its blowing and Higgs, for the first time since he arrived, takes a breath. The air tastes sour. Reeking of death, thick on his tongue, palpable, even. It makes Higgs want to throw up. He doesn’t. He can’t, because suddenly he’s no longer on the beach, he’s walking over the ridge that traps him there. Startled, he looks down at hands that are not his own. A body. That is not his own.
No. That’s impossible.
There’s someone else on his beach.
He feels it, like a sixth sense, on the back of his neck. A tingle - he’s being watched. He can feel it, feel this intruder step foot onto his beach, and the first thing he feels is not joy at his isolation coming to an end, nor is it fear at what it implicates, but outrage. Territorial outrage, as though he’s some mindless beast who claims land and rips out the throat of any creature who dares trespass. Higgs unsheathes his blade from his hip as his mind comes back to itself and slowly draws himself to full height. Inky black tar boils at his feet as he turns, every so often gathering enough strength and density to warp into a hand that tugs weakly at his pant leg before he kicks it clear again. “Here, kitty,” he croons. The knife in his grasp glints eagerly at the thought of fresh blood. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t just as eager. “Here, kitty kitty!”
Movement. By the ridge.
Higgs wills the tar form itself into a panther at his side. “Wills” might be too loose a term - he commands it to, and rakes a gloved finger across its back when the cat takes shape. “Hello there,” he drawls, grin widening, “I can see you. Do come out, let me see your pretty face…”
The dead brush rustles.
“Don’ hurt me,” a timid voice says. Higgs nearly trips over his BT as he stops suddenly, confusion flickering briefly across his face. The voice is anything but what he expected; he thought Amelie, maybe, or some other lost, tormented soul. He watches, dumbstruck, as a small, pale hand grasps the edge of a boulder and a young child appears atop the hill. A girl, by the looks of it. Probably ten or eleven, but Higgs doesn’t exactly have experience with children to have any qualification in his guess. She’s young, anyways. Young and short. Most of her body is buried in the stiff folds of a bright orange poncho; one that is much too big for her and looks like it’s been hemmed badly by someone who shouldn’t be trusted with scissors and then repaired by someone who knows what they’re doing. She looks like a walking warning sign. Higgs, in his dark stealth attire, flinches at the sight. At least her pants - soft white leggings, by his guesstimate - don’t match the godawful poncho on top. Her shoes are firm rubber things, similar to both Higgs’ own and those he’s seen worn by - ugh - Bridges employees. One employee, really, but the thought makes him mad regardless even if that employee has sort of garnered his respect. But just a little.
The child shuffles down the hill, little hands picking nervously at themselves. Her boots score great gashes in the earth. She’s trying to steady herself in her descent. It works, she doesn’t fall, though she stumbles when her feet reach flat ground. Surprisingly, she doesn’t seem perturbed by the massive panther circling Higgs’ legs and baring golden fangs the size of her arm. Gutsy kid. She seems to be focused more on the chiralium blade pointed at her - which, Higgs admits, is completely fair. He would be too, had he not been completely desensitized to threats of any kind for years beforehand. Although he’s compelled to sheathe it again, he doesn’t, instead opting to simply lower it. Reduces wariness while still keeping control over the situation. The girl peers up at him from under soft, short curls of strawberry blonde hair. She doesn’t seem to recognize him. Higgs isn’t sure if that should concern him or not. “Well, hi, sweetheart,” he purrs. “And who might you be?”
“Hi,” the girl says. “I’m Lou.”