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This chaos demon has the weirdest wind powers Will has ever seen. Not as difficult as the others, though. He breathes heavily, hanging back and letting the other two go in for the more melee attacks. The rooftop is gray and paved in gravel. He chances a look out at the city. He can see the entire area from the roof of this high rise.
It’s not quite like New Haven. The skyline is different, and the buildings more brightly colored, but it’s close enough to make him feel a twinge of homesickness.
He looks back at the battle. Vyncent is going in for the final blow with his new sword. Right, good. Time to go back to the Winnebago. Where did he park it agai–
There’s a catastrophic boom , and Will snaps to attention, calculations running through his head. The demon was down. A last-ditch attack? There’s a burst of light and sound and wind, and the shockwave pushes Vyncent to the ground, makes Dakota stumble. The force hits William like a truck, and he takes a step back but there’s nothing there and
Will
is
falling
Just like the forest. Just like the cliff. And there’s something to be said about having died already. It really doesn’t make you less scared— it just lets you know what the fear tastes like. So instead of meeting a strange new enemy, this feels like welcoming an old friend, knocking at your door in a flash of ice-cold, helpless terror. Like how his mother would greet friends and not-friends in the grocery store– all oh, how’ve you been and how are the kids and how many times can he die before it sticks?
And Dakota sees William stumble and grasp at thin air, and fall backwards— but it’s like he sees it in slow motion. Like the world tilts with William, hangs in the threat of motion. He’s a thousand pieces of shattered glass hung up in just the right way to have the impression of a person, and he can see the threads catch the light. The fear is sickening, nauseating, wrong. And then the threads snap , and he plummets . Dakota doesn’t even think— he just jumps.
Vyncent sees everything in the adrenaline-fueled maelstrom of wind and sound. He sees William trip, and he sees the dawning horror on his face, and he sees Dakota start running, and he knows that he will be too late. He is going to be too late and Will is gonna die (again) and Dakota is also gonna die (again) and Vyncent, adaptable, roll-with-the-punches Vyncent Sol is going to be all alone, once more. When the fear arrives, it’s crushing, numbing, complete devastation. But hey– only one of those two have come back before without help. So Vyncent makes a decision.
He only just catches the heel of Dakota’s boot and then almost drops him with how hard he’s struggling. But he doesn’t, and it’s no longer a problem—
because
there’s
a sickening crack
Below them. And Dakota freezes. Vyncent takes this opportunity to pull Dakota up, and he doesn’t look down. He knows what he’ll see. So he doesn’t. He does. not. look. down. And so he heaves in breath after exhausted breath, halfway through exhaustion and hyperventilation, on this fucking rooftop, staring straight at the sky. Not his sky, though.
No, this doesn’t look like home at all.
Dakota kneels next to him, staring blank-faced at the ledge. Because he saw it all. Somehow, in some part of his brain, he thinks he should be screaming. But he’s not. He can’t, because all. he. can. do. is replay when William hit the ground. Over and over and over. The snap, the lifeless collapse, the blood. The way Will reached towards him. The despair in his eyes, the frustration, the hope. Has this happened before? Is this what it looked like the first time Will died? The second time? Is this what it looked like when Dakota died? When she died? When he failed? Did he just fail again? Is Will– Is he–
Did Dakota fail to save someone, again?
Dakota touches his face. Huh… he’s crying. He doesn’t…
William Wisp recalls a few things in a very short period of time. Firstly, free-fall fucking sucks. There’s the lurch, and then the wind, and you can struggle but there’s nothing to grab to stop yourself, there’s nothing you can do. The brightly colored windows of the high-rise apartment complex blur into one another. He hopes no-one’s looking out of the window. That would be super embarrassing.
Secondly, William remembers that Dakota has some internalized Things about people he loves falling. He remembers this as the lurch sets in, and as he reaches up futilely for something, anything– and there’s Dakota. There’s his hand, reaching for him, and for a second, there’s a flash of hope– maybe Dakota can reach. Maybe he can– maybe he–
But William is too far gone, Dakota would have to jump– and why was it even a question? There he goes, over the edge. God fucking dammit. Now they’re both gonna die, and even though they both have pretty good track records with death, Dakota doesn’t have a full team of surgeons like last time. Fuck, Dakota’s gonna die. What can he do? Can he ghost-shape something? Is there– Oh , there’s Vyncent.
There’s a split second when Will looks Vyncent dead in the eyes and tries to tell him. And Vyncent gets it. Of course he does. The three of them, they’re a team. And because they’re a team, he knows how bad this is gonna hurt Dakota. But better hurt than dead, and William smiles into the freefall as Vyncent catches the heel of Dakota’s boot.
He looks at his friends as he goes down, down, down. Neither Dakota nor Vyncent look away. Good, William thinks. At least this time he isn’t dying alone.
The third and final thing Will remembers is a song. They used to go to church on Sundays, in Deadwood. Well, his mother did, at least, and she’d drag Will and his father down to Deadwood Episcopal Church in their good Sunday clothes. And it was boring mostly, but William did like the songs. It’s weird– Will never was very religious. Any hope of that ended at the cold, rocky bottom of Mitre Cliff in Deadwood’s south forest. In the spirit world, Dakota had asked, in his Dakota way, if Will was like an angel.
Like an angel.
He recalls the tiny wooden cherub on top of his mother’s dark piano. If he was like an angel, maybe he could’ve flown out of this one. But William Wisp is earth-bound in more ways than one, and it’s one of those harmonies in the little red book of hymnals that he remembers as he falls.
Nearer, my god, to thee
I wanna be nearer, lord,
and
nearer
to–
After the litany of “oh fuck oh shit oh my gods William is dead,” stops racing through Vyncent’s head, he realizes that they need to go get Will’s body so that he can do whatever the hell he does in the Spirit World and be alive again. It worked this way last time.
Oh, shit, last time . Last time there was Ashe, and Ashe could– could translate through the veil or whatever the fuck he does. And even then, it took a while for Will to come back. Hm. That’s… not good. “We should go, uh, get him.” Vyncent says into the dead air.
Shit. Vyncent knew that Dakota was scary, but he had always been scary for other people. Kinda a strange thing, to be scared of Dakota. He’s feelin’ it right now, though. ‘Cause Dakota looks pissed.
“So, like, what the fuck, Vyncent?”
“Whatdoyoumean.”
“What do you mean, what do I mean?”
“I mean, what do you mea– ”
“I could have saved him.”
“... Dakota.”
“No, Vyncent! I could’ve! He was right there , and you stopped me! What the fuck, man!”
“Dakota, I saved you! You– you would have died!” He cuts Dakota off, before he even starts to speak. The anger starts to bubble up. “No, no you know what? Fuck you. Both of you have died before, but there aren’t any healers here! They can’t fix you up again, Dakota. Will–” his voice crumbles under the weight of a dead man’s name. “Will’s different. He’ll come back. Like last time. He’s fine.”
Dakota has a steeled stubbornness to his eyes, and there’s resentment in the way he holds his jaw.
Vyncent grits his teeth. “Dakota, you can’t take this out on me. Don’t you think I— I saw it too. ”
“It’s not your fault, Dakota. And it isn’t mine either.”
“... Come on.” It’s the only thing left for Vyncent to say. “We need to go get Will.”
Will’s eyes shoot open with a gasp. Well. There’s an attempt at a gasp. And at having eyes. And motion. But it– it doesn’t really work too well.
William gets up from the sidewalk that he can’t really feel. There’s a crowd of people huddling around something he can’t really see. His fingers blur into static. And he would never usually say anything like this, but–
“Hey,” his voice is gravelly and weak as he reaches his hand out to the shoulder of the nearest person, a woman wearing a light blue suit. “Can you help me?” It’s– he feels guilty, to ask like this but— “Please, I – I think I need help .” It feels desperate. Pathetic. He feels pathetic.
He feels pathetic, and weak, and everything hurts so, so much. But there are so many people here. Surely someone can help him. Call an ambulance, maybe. Get Da– Tide. Get Vyncent and Dakota and Ashe. They can help.
But his hand, it glitches and fuzzes around the edges, and when he tries to tap her shoulder, he goes right through her. Damn. He thought he’d gotten better at that.
She doesn’t look at him. She doesn’t notice him at all, actually, ‘cause she’s staring at something in front of her. She looks– she looks horrified. There’s a man next to her, in the crowd. He’s staring, fixated, in the same direction. His hand is over his mouth. It looks like he’s crying. William can’t see what they’re looking at.
But he is William Wisp, the Wisperer, even if– even if something feels very, very wrong. These people are upset, and he is a hero.
“What’s– hey, what’s wrong? Is someone hurt?” Will can’t really breathe right. No-one looks at him. A power, maybe? He pushes through the crowd. His head hurts, so bad, like someone’s stabbing him with a pickaxe. “I’m– I can help, it’s gonna be okay—”
Oh that’s. That is a lot of blood. That’s his blood. That’s–
Before he can even see his face on his dead body , he knows what this feeling is. William Wisp is a thousand thousand glittering shards of glass, hung up by fishing wire and thread in the vague shape of a person.
Being dead– it’s like every jagged fragment is floating away from each other. He has to focus all his energy into keeping the shape of a person, into remembering what a face looks like, instead of existing in millions of disparate, gleaming splinters of a soul.
Being dead, he feels a thousand miles away, wrapped in layer after layer of cotton. And he can’t feel anything, trapped in a spinning senseless nothingness, very cold and still and empty.
And being dead, it’s like there’s this sheet of plastic in between him and the world. A thin film that covers his fingers and blurs his eyesight and gets caught in his throat when he tries to take a breath. It gets caught, and then he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe–
Being dead, it’s like every part of him is breaking and shattering and reforming, or like he’s drifting in dissociation and withering away from the inside, or like he’s constantly suffocating in a plastic bag— maybe this is how it feels to burn alive, or maybe that creeping numbness is called frostbite– maybe this feels like flying, or maybe the tightrope has snapped underneath him. Maybe he’s just in freefall .
Or maybe it’s just that William is dead . He’s dead and this isn’t his world anymore. He doesn’t belong here. Fuck.
There’s a paramedic crouched over his body. His hair is matted with blood. It covers his eyes. He reaches for the medic’s arm.
“H-hey, hey, it’s okay, you know? I’m fine. Well, I’m not fine, I guess and it– wow, it really hurts but, like, there’s really nothing to be done now.” He tries to grab the medic’s hand. He tries to hit the ground. He tries to shout. Nothing.
He hates this. The grief hurts, but– the frustration is wrecking . Will chokes on a sob, and there’s an agonizing, white-hot flash of pain in his chest.
He hates that , too. Usually, dying doesn’t fucking hurt like this.
Will reaches deep inside, into that cutting, swirling storm of glass, for that blazing spark of blue that holds his wisp form.
Nothing.
What?
Then—
Last time, Will got back to life by using his wisp form. And– and Ashe isn’t here to translate. Ashe is gone . And, fuck, if this keeps going, Will’s gonna be gone, too.
He stares into nothing, next to his broken and shattered corpse. The sidewalk should be hard and gritty and slick from his own blood. He doesn’t feel it. He tries to hold his body’s dead hand. It’s cold. Everything is cold.
Dakota follows Vyncent down the stairs. Step by step, he leaves the rooftop behind. Vyncent’s words still ring in his ears.
Not your fault. Not your fault.
not
your
fault
Flight by flight, the two of them move quietly. There’s nothing to say. There are brightly colored rectangular windows on one side of the walls, all the way up and down the stairwell. Dakota looks out, and he sees the city. It’s not at all like New Haven.
Step by step, they get closer to Will.
Vyncent gets to the door first. Dakota can already see the crowd of people through the dirty glass doors. He can see Vynce freeze, staring at the door’s handle. His hand is shaking.
Dakota understands, but he’s going to go insane if he’s not outside and next to William in the next five seconds, so he pushes the door open, too hard. The glass shatters off of its frame in a cloud of sharp, glittering fragments.
The shh - crack of glass falling to the ground snaps them both out of the slow daze they’d descended in. Dakota starts sprinting to the cluster of people on the sidewalk, Vyncent not far after.
His heart is beating in his throat as Dakota pushes through the crowd. People squawk as he pushes them aside, but he feels so frantic he might jump out of his skin–
Oh. A horrible stillness spears Dakota to the ground. There’s Wiliam, but– Dakota can’t move, he can’t speak, he can’t do anything but stare. At his too-pale skin. The dark-red blood that forms a halo around his head. His hood, fallen back. His tangled pitch-black hair covers his eyes. He is unmoving. There is a frantic paramedic in white at his side.
“Oh, Will.” Vyncent’s voice is a heart-wrenching, world-shaking thing, panicky and desolate and desperate, and it breaks whatever is holding Dakota petrified.
In a second, Dakota is kneeling at his side. Last time, there wasn’t anything visibly wrong with William. This time, he can see– he can see exactly what’s killing (has killed?) his friend. It feels like the floor’s fallen out underneath him. Each word feels inadequate.
“W-Will? Hey, William? You– you alright, buddy? You, uh, are you–”
The paramedic looks at him. Their skin is very tan, and their hair is in braids. They’re trying to put pressure on a wound on Will’s arm. “Do you two know him?”
Vyncent speaks up for the both of them, hoarsely. “He’s our friend. Is he–”
The paramedic cuts him off. “No, no, he’s not– he’s not dead yet, but–”
Dakota’s head immediately snaps to Vyncent, who pales. “Vynce, can you–” he mimes shooting a gun.
“No– no, fuck , I can’t heal anymore, Dakota! The Greats are– they’re gone, so I– I can’t –”
Shit. Fuck. God fucking damn it. “But it’s fine, right!” He looks at the paramedic. “It’s fine, right? We can get him to a hospital, and it’ll be fine. He’ll be fine.” Yes. That’s all they need to do. Dakota’s fast, he can run to the nearest hospital really quickly, and then William’ll be fine and everything will be okay–
The paramedic, they get this horrible look on their face. “I’m sorry. These injuries– he should have died on impact. He could have hours or minutes, but–” they sigh. “This is not survivable. There’s nothing we can do.”
Dakota feels his world lurch, hang in the threat of motion. Sure, Will’s come back from death before, but–
But there’s no guarantee .
Vyncent came back to this world for four reasons, and one of them is lying crumpled, bleeding, and dying in front of him. He doesn’t really understand what the healer said, but Dakota is starting to cry, so he gets the gist.
It’s strange, he thinks, how wrong Will looks.
This still and shattered person just can’t be the boy he shared a blanket with on movie nights. Can’t be the teammate he fights with. Can’t be his living, moving friend. Surely, William Wisp isn’t really dying on the pavement in front of him. Surely.
It tears at him, the desperation. The grief. It’s striking, the fragility of his friends and the lengths he would go to to help them. To keep them safe.
… He’ll be fine. He has to be.
The healer leaves, to give them “time to say goodbye.” He takes their place on the other side of Will, across from Dakota. To keep the tearing, clawing fear from pulling him down, Vyncent talks.
“Y’know, this would– this would be a really dumb way to die, Will.”
“Yeah,” Dakota sniffles. “Yeah, so you can’t die to– wind. To air? That’s lame!”
“Who will I watch shitty movies with if you’re not– around?” Vyncent gently holds Will’s hand. It’s cold, shockingly so. He drops it, and tries not to cry.
“Yeah, and who’s gonna drive the Winnebago? You gotta. You gotta pull some weird resurrection shit out of the bag, okay? I don’t wanna. I don’t– I don’t wanna have to call Tide and tell him– tell him that–” Dakota breaks into tears.
“ Heroes don’t die, Will!”
He holds onto William’s hoodie. “So don’t. So you gotta come back.”
A sob burns at the back of Vyncent’s throat. He delicately brushes away Will’s hair from his eyes. His face is calm in death. His eyes are closed. Vyncent feels like he’s shattering. His hands shake and his nails bite red-half circles into his palm.
“Please,” he whispers, a prayer, a plea, a hopeless appeal to Will’s blood staining his hands and to Dakota’s muffled sobbing.
Senses are weird, right now, but Will sort-of hears glass cascade to the floor. Sounds are fairly muffled when you’re– dead . He turns around, and– It’s Dakota. And Vyncent. And they look terrible. And– oh, fuck. Oh, shit, shit, shit. Oh absolute balls– they’re gonna see him–
Oh, and they're just– okay, they’re here now. Great. This is, perhaps, the Worst Thing. The shame wells up, dizzying.
Will’s tier list of Bad Things, however, is completely revamped the second he sees Dakota freeze. Vyncent says his name, and he sounds absolutely wrecked. When Dakota rushes over to right next to him and starts mumbling, the tierlist is destroyed. Will catches something through the fuzz- Vynce’s voice.
“... friend. Is he…?”
“Dead? No, not yet, but–” The paramedic responds, and if Will still had a heart it would have stopped. He’s not–? He’s not dead? He sure fucking feels it. He catches bits and pieces of the next conversation, something Dakota’s saying about a hospital. He–
He can see Dakota, clutching his hoodie. He’s crying. Vyncent brushes the hair away from his body’s face. There’s deep, wrenching longing clawing underneath his fragmented ribs. He can’t watch his friends mourn. He can’t do it. This is not something William is okay with.
He’s not okay with it, so he’s gonna do something about it. He staggers into an alleyway at the side of the building. His leg glitches out of existence and he stumbles into a wall for a second before he remembers what having a leg feels like. The grit of the brick should be rough, but it’s not. It’s smooth and cold. Static buzzes and coalesces and disperses at the edge of his vision. Being almost-dead is so much worse than being dead.
His fingers blur and fuzz at the edges, but he picks up a small stick from the alley. As long as he can show them that he’s okay, then it’ll be alright. The crowd of people disperse when they see the floating stick, which is good ‘cause it is taking everything that William has to be able to hold this thing airborne. Just a little more. Just a little farther.
One of his fingers loses shape and the stick starts to drop. Shit, no, no, nonono. William considers the distance between him and the other two. He considers his tangibility. He considers Dakota’s white-knuckled grip and the look of anguish on Vyncent’s face. He chucks the stick directly at them.
Dakota’s face is pressed into the soft fabric of William’s hoodie. His face is wet with tears, and he feels raw and wretched. Every time Will dies it’s a lottery as to whether or not he’ll actually come back, and the threat of a future without him hovers like a predator. A world without William would fucking suck , actually–
Thwack! Something hits him in the head. Literally what the fuck.
“HEY,” Dakota shouts, still a bit choked up. “WHO THREW THAT.”
He looks over to Vyncent, who looks shocked. “It was– floating,” He says.
Dakota and Vyncent come to the exact same realization at the exact same time.
“WILL!” Vyncent shouts. “Will, is that you?”
“William, you bastard, did you just throw something at me?”
The paramedic is giving them the crazy eyes look. Lots of people look at him like that. It doesn’t matter, though. ‘Cause that was William. Dakota knows it.
“Do you have a marker?” Vyncent asks the paramedic. “Or like a pen or something? Or an ouija board, that’s fine too.”
“Oh, to talk to him! Good thinking, Vynce.”
There’s some wall-eyed staring before they dig a black sharpie out of their bag and hand it to Dakota.
“Okay, now what.”
Vyncent starts to scribble on the pavement. “I watched a bunch of paranormal investigator shows to try to understand Will’s powers better.” Vyncent picks up a stick– oh, that’s what must have hit him– and drops it in the middle. “Look!” There’s a scribbly alphabet scrawled on the ground. “Now we can ask questions and Will can, like, point out letters and spell words to answer!”
“Ah, okay, okay! William, are you— good? Like, you okay man?” Dakota asks.
The stick starts to move. Dakota gasps, and Vyncent holds his breath. The paramedic looks faint.
It points to one letter at a time, but it’s slow, stopping and stuttering. Not at all like how Ghost William moved things last time he died.
s-o-r-t o-f, the stick writes.
Vyncent’s brow furrows in concern. Dakota feels a restless, anxious energy tap at his fingers. “What do you mean, sort of? Are you okay or not, dude?”
n-o-t f-u-l-l-y d-e-a-d, it says. d-y-i-n-g.
There’s a deadly silence while that sinks in. The stick writes again:
h-u-r-t-s.
Will finishes pointing the end of the stick to “s”. He bites his lip and tries not to cry. It really does. It really hurts. It comes in waves, washing over him until he’s drowning in the blinding-white agony of it, pulling away to let him breathe for a second, before it returns again. It really hurts, and he wants nothing more than to leave this lonely, cold, dizzying world and feel okay again. He wants it so bad that it overcomes the constant hum of guilt and shame and nervousness, and he impulsively directs the stick to form two new words:
h-e-l-p m-e
He can see Vyncent put his hand over his mouth, and Dakota kicks the wall. He can’t tell what they’re saying. It’s all blurred and muffled. A word slips through the haze. “ How.” How can they help him. That’s a hell of a question. Especially ‘cause he doesn’t know. Well, he might have– maybe an idea. They’re gonna hate it though. He hates it. He pushes the edge of the stick.
k-i-l-l m-e
Sometimes, he can see little blue sparks fly off of his body. There’s something there, and he thinks that's why he feels so– incomplete. So wrong. And so, logically. If his body actually dies, then he’ll get his wisps back. And then he can go back into his wisp form, and then everything will be fine. And he can be home again.
Neither Vyncent nor Dakota look very happy. Vyncent puts his hand on the hilt of his sword, but he looks hesitant.
t-r-u-s-t, Will writes. It’s getting harder and harder to move things. It takes so much energy. It hurts. The static ebbs and prickles at his hands and feet.
Vyncent watches the stick write. Trust. Trust Will. He can do that. He pulls his sword from its sheath and looks at Dakota.
“Dakota?”
“Yeah,” He says, resolute. “I trust you and I trust William. If he says this is gonna help then it’s gonna. Do it.”
Vyncent steels himself. He holds the blade directly over Will’s heart with one hand. If he can feel everything, he needs to make this quick. He needs to make this quick. He does, but– but that’s Will , and hesitation stops him from letting the blade fall.
And then someone is holding his hand. He turns around immediately, but no-one is there. It was just for a second, but he’s so sure. He looks back at Will again.
Vyncent thinks about the phantom feeling of a hand on his own, and he stabs William Wisp in the heart.
Will tries to breathe slowly. To keep himself together. He looks at Vynce. He looks at the sword he holds over Will’s body. He looks at his shaking hands, and the hesitation in his stance.
He tries to grab Vyncent’s hand. And it– oh my god, it works. For a second, he can feel the warmth of the living world, and it only sharpens his feeling of loss. Will holds onto Vyncent’s hand like a man possessed.
“It’s– hey, it’s okay. It’s–” Will laughs, half hysteric and half manic. “It’s like a trust fall , right?”
And then there’s sharp, stabbing, overwhelming pain directly in his chest. For a second, nothing happens. And then, there’s a blaze of light and blue fire and
Will
is
alive
Blessedly, beautifully alive. His eyes shoot open beaming pale light. His hair floats up, white as bone, and balls of blue flame spark to life in the air around him. Unearthly. But– he can feel. He can hear. He can breathe. He stares at his hands. He stares at Dakota and Vyncent, frozen.
He pushes himself up from the blood-soaked ground, slowly. His body protests, but in a soreness kind of pain, and not a shattered-bone kind of pain. The wisps really worked some magic on him. He flexes his fingers and they don’t blur. He looks at Vyncent and Dakota again.
Will tackle hugs them. Vynce hugs back even harder. Dakota’s flannel is soft. The tenderness and warmth and gentleness fucking breaks William and he drops his wisp form and sobs into Dakota’s shoulder.
“ Fuck, that sucked. That was– that was really bad,” Will gets out. “ I missed you guys .”
Vyncent squeezes tighter. “Holy shit. Thank the gods. Oh, holy fuck, you’re alright. Yeah, we are never doing that again. Never again.”
“You gotta promise me , Will,” Dakota pulls back to look him in the eyes. “You gotta promise me that you’re gonna stop falling off of high shit. I can’t take this, dude.”
William laughs weakly. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I’m done with tall buildings for a while. Hoo, that was shitty. Wow! Let’s– I think I need a shower. Can we–?”
“Yeah.” Vyncent agrees. “Yeah, let’s go home.”