Work Text:
Luke doesn’t recognize the area. There is not much to go by to begin with, the forest consists of pines and many other plants that do not need much to grow, small bilberry bushes covering parts of the ground, an old tree laying here or there, gathering moss and growing mushrooms. Just like any other forest in these parts.
And so, Luke travels on, finds the place ordinary, watches the sun filter in through the branches, getting caught by a drop of dew until a pair of butterflies come to play around it, letting the broken light beams dance over their wings. It’s an idyllic and playful scene and Luke likes this random spot of forest a bit more. There is not much nowadays that he likes about the serene quiet of uninhabited wilderness. He himself has become much calmer, no longer calling to friends when he sees them from a distance, no longer drinking and dancing long into the night, but he seeks out the company of other people more strongly. The silence of the wilderness gets to him more quickly nowadays and makes him imagine voices that are long since gone.
Watching the butterflies, Luke doesn’t notice that he entered one of those places that seem to exist outside the continuum of time and space, that are hidden away in the endless mass of every street – or every tree as it is here – looking exactly the same, only to pop up unexpectedly, leaving the wanderer breathless with sudden realization.
Today, Lucky Luke is so unlucky as not to realize that he is headed to the worst of them, otherwise, he might have turned Jolly around to never come back. Not that it would work, he always comes back at some point or another. As it is, the butterflies are playing and the silence is gentle, and so he goes onward. When he finally realizes where he is it is too late.
Luke recognizes the area. The suddenness is like a bullet to the chest and Luke pulls on Jolly’s reins harshly with a gasp. It’s the old cabin snuggled up in a clearing in the woods, looking sad and tired with its drooping chimney and the dark broken windows that look like the lifeless eyes of a dead animal.
Luke unmounts onto unsteady legs, takes a steadying breath and – with a last comforting pet to Jolly’s neck – steps closer. He shouldn’t, he knows, but the old cabin pulls him in like the flames pulls in a moth against its better judgement, blinding it with hope and longing. The door swings open with a creak, old wood pliant under his hand. Dust and dimness greet him. The front room looks exactly like he remembers, exactly like last time and the time before that, which is not entirely correct, because once, there was no puddle to his right that comes dripping in from a holes in the roof, and once, there was no greenery, no moss and fungi and other darkness loving beings creeping in on the floor boards.
He remembers it. He called out to them, exhausted and cold, hoping dearly that for one night, they could be friends, at least until the blizzard settled. Averell is there, poking his head through the doorway of the kitchen, confusion on his face, as well as a mixture of happiness and wariness. He never knew how to act around their greatest nemesis, and Luke swallows thickly against the huge lump in his throat, blinks rapidly to clear his vision and moves further into the abandoned cabin. He almost makes to pull off his boots by the door.
There’s the kitchen where they all sat together in comfortable warmth, the fireplace warming up the decently sized room. They looked and jumped up when he came in, his teeth chattering and his gun holstered. A truce for the night, he asked, nothing more, not a bed to sleep in, not a meal to eat, yet they offered him a hearty soup and left him be when he settled down in the rocking chair by the fire, tiredness overtaking him soon.
The rocking chair is long gone. The fireplace, a black hole in the wall swallowing up everything that comes too close, looks larger now, like it has grown since last time. Luke does not step into the kitchen, even though he hears terrible jokes and booming laughter there as soon as he turns his head and he no longer sees that the room is empty.
It hurts. The memories hurt like a red hot knife carving into his heart, taking it apart piece by piece. He hasn’t seen them ever since that night. The next morning, he woke up on his own, the fire dying and the world a winter wonderland. There were tracks in the snow, sure, but they were messy and Luke could only tell that they had been up and about for quite a while before leaving in a direction that he could no longer make out.
Not that Luke has never heard of them ever since. He has, and it makes his blood run cold each time he thinks of it. It doesn’t help that his legs have carried him over to the bedroom where four beds stand, neatly arranged next to each other, two on the right wall, two on the left. The one closest to the window is the only one where the sheets are not white, even with years of collecting dust. It is dark and corroded, creatures having eaten through it because of the metallic smell that always attracts one beast or another. Luke feels like the smell is still lingering in the air, even after all these years.
He remembers how he got here after hearing the news. This was the only place they could have gone to, there was nothing else around for miles and the weather was almost as bad as the first time, yet Luke had taken precautions and not ridden up right to their porch. He wasn’t stupid, he knew that he was being followed and that was not a thing he wanted to make the brothers deal with when they were already in trouble, even without him and his persecutors. Yet, when he finally dared to approach, the door swung open under his hand with ease, no one answered when he called out, and the stench of blood hung heavily in the air. He followed the smell, his worry increasing with every step. The bed closest to the window was Joe’s, he remembers that.
“You couldn’t have gone over the mountains”, Luke whispers into the oppressive silence of the room as he stares down at the bed, “You wouldn’t have stood a chance even without being injured.”
The knowledge comes back and it haunts him like everything else in this house, making his knees weak with regret and his throat feel tight. He has to grab onto the doorframe to keep himself upright.
It’s too late to change anything, and he hates himself for it. There is another kind of feeling, small like a seedling, sitting in his chest and digging thin spindly roots through his guts like the plants that have taken over this old cabin.
"This was your greatest escape, Joe. For once, you even tricked me", he says and recognizes the seedling as pride.
Suddenly, Luke has an absurd thought, flashing through his mind for but a moment, that the brothers actually never left and he kneels down onto the floor to look under the beds, but there’s nothing there and he is relieved, because dried up skulls and horrifying mummified corpses are dancing in his mind’s eye and he feels sick to the stomach. He would not be able to take it if he found them now, after all these years. After all the times he’s been circling back over and over again.
It’s been twenty years, and Luke still never recognizes the area until he’s standing right in front of the abandoned cabin.