revivalproject | Heaven's on Fire

Entry tags:

Heaven's on Fire - KISS

WHO: Billy Hargrove and those that join him
WHERE: Mostly Temba's city-center area, maybe the Upside-Down
WHAT: Hey there's an event thingy
WHEN: During the event timeline
WARNINGS:STRANGER THINGS SPOILERS, profanity, event warnings, violence, panic/PTSD attacks, will update as they make themselves known

October 10th

Run To You - Bryan Adams
He’s in the civic center when the storm hits. Billy had seen it coming, but didn’t think anything of it. It’s a storm. It wouldn’t be anything to worry about. Earthquakes (well, volcanoes), those were something to worry about. Storms were not. So he had done his workout as usual as it hit and when he left…

…Well, Billy would wish later he hadn’t. Because upon leaving the civic center with the intention of hitting the diner and then heading home, he heard something. No, not something.

Someone.

He whirls around in place, his hair whipping about wildly as he struggles to see if it’s her. And Billy sees her in the distance. Tired muscles be damned, he breaks into a run, heading right towards the woman. She doesn’t seem to get closer no matter how far he runs.

“MOM!!” he all but screams out, determined to get to her, damn it. It’s hard to see with all of the lights out and the storm blocking out the sun. “Mom!” he shouts again. She disappears into the clouds, reappearing in different positions in the distance, never in the same spot. Billy looks confused, turning to try and track her.
 What was going on?!

The ghost of his mother disappeared and he turned, looking for her. “I DONT’ UNDERSTAND!!” he yells, feeling the echo of those words from when he was at the Steelworks building.

October 11th - 12th 

It’s The End of the World As We Know It - R.E.M.
It’s not the gate opening that starts it. It’s not the sight of the stupid looking bats or that weird flower dog.

It’s the gigantic thing that he knows from the mall. Seeing that mind flayer on the other side of the gate while trying to get from the cabin to the hotel to make sure there are others okay (hint: that didn’t happen). He freezes, the blood draining from his face to leave his skin white. Billy’s clammy and cold all in the span of a few seconds, but more importantly?

He’s terrified.

Billy knows that that monster can do. He’s felt it. It’s going to kill him when he’s sent home by the aliens here.

It’s here to kill him.

He ducks behind the fountain before darting to be against one of the side walls of the diner. Billy’s curling up, screaming and holding his head and looking like he’s agony. The guy is physically fine, but his mind is not. Guess seeing the very creature you helped create in your world while being possessed by the enemy would do that to you.

October 13th - End

If You Want Blood (You Got It) - AC/DC
No. He can’t be a pussy about this shit. It’ll kill him back home, but Billy has the tools to stop the beasts here. Gladio had found him in the chaos and dropped off an axe. Something about ‘use it if you need it, kid’ before running off to do more warrior things.

The axe had felt heavy in his lap from where he was sitting. But then Billy stood up, testing out it’s weight as he had been trained. It felt good. Felt right. He gave it a few swings before the confidence started growing in him. Billy could do this. He stopped the flayer’s tongue with his bare hands, didn’t he? He could stop the whole thing with his axe. He could stop any of them!

Heading out from where he had bunkered himself, Billy found one of those bat-things headed towards him. It took a few swings through the air (five, if you’re counting), to get it, but hitting it with the dull side knocked it down to the ground to slice through it with the blade.

“Take that you creepy fucker!” he shouted at it, giving it another smack. Black blood stained his boots and jeans as he hit something in it, before he moved on to the next one.

“COME GET SOME, FUCKERS!!” he shouted, wielding the weapon with far more confidence than he had when it had been dropped off.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Yeah, yes, that's right, Billy. The diner's safe." Or, safer. Definitely safer than this. They're right outside, and he can go in and hide in the kitchen, away from the windows, away from the bats. There's just the doors leading in and out of it, and maybe the bats are smart but not enough to pull a door handle.

He approaches slowly, cautiously, not wanting to get kicked again, and with both his hands up so Billy can see them. "It's just me, Billy. It's Steve. Rogers. Kinda different without all the height, I know. But bear with me, I'm gonna help you up. We're gonna walk inside the diner. I'm gonna protect you from whatever that is, okay?"

Which, okay, tall order, but Steve is optimistic if nothing else. "You ready?"

This was Rogers? The guy he met in the diner awhile ago? No way that’s possible. Blue eyes dart between the hands. Unarmed. Not a threat.

"Wrong. Not Rogers. Too small." Breathe. Breathe, it’s okay. "Too scrawny."

There’s a screech of a demobat above them and Billy jerks. It’s not safe. Not safe, not safe, not— the creature lands on the diner and screeches down at them. Far off screeches answer it. Now it’s really not safe and they have to get inside. "Inside! Diner!" That gaze is locked onto the creature as it takes wing down towards them. Billy is scrambling back to his feet, getting them lost under him for a moment before he’s grabbing the wall for grip.

They gotta go.

Now.

Edited (Fixed a sentence) 2023-10-12 18:54 (UTC)

Oh thank goodness Billy seems to finally get the message. Steve turns to him and says "Go inside!" as he runs for the stick again, beating off the demobat with a loud crunch. Clearly Steve's played baseball in his day, though several more are coming down.

"Billy, go! I'm right behind you!" he shouts, as he sees a swarm in the distance trying to descend. He runs back, dropping the stick again, because they're going inside. He won't need it. He doesn't want to scare Billy. They'll make it through this.

Billy’s brain is scrambling, trying to figure out what’s going on as Rogers, this wrong Steve, tells him to go. The bricks bite into his fingers and that’s when he realizes that he’s holding the wall to tightly. Then they’re warm with his blood pricking to the surface.

The crunch and wild shriek of the creature pulls him back before the blond can lose himself again. More shrieking fills the air as others start to come to their brethren‘s aid. It’s enough to get the Californian to move, scrambling to the diner doors. He lunges in as soon as the door is open, and when Steve clears it, it’s getting slammed shut again.

Still not safe. Doors, windows, all too exposed. Billy darts into the kitchen, finding the furthest corner and curling into it.

Edited (One day my phone will not give me typos ) 2023-10-13 13:10 (UTC)

That's fine. The diner's got so many large windows, so Steve bars them up and then thinks about timing it - how long before the demobats feel like there's nothing inside - but he knows Billy needs someone to work him through this, so he puts a stick across the door and then makes his way to the back.

"Billy, it's just me," he says, not walking too far into the kitchen. "It's Steve. I'm not gonna let anything come get you." The shrieking is mumbled, and so is the rumbling movement of the heavier creatures moving in unison. "You're at the diner. It's just you and me. No mall. No fireworks."

"I'm gonna pour you a glass of water."

The kitchen is a good temperature at least. It’s not too hot at least, nothing was cooking. He’s got full body shakes going on even as Steve joins him in the room, and his arms around his middle like someone that’s hurt even though he’s not.

The noises of the demobats is muffled more as the door swings shut behind him. "Wrong. Too small, too scrawny." Billy sounds like he’s freezing even as he swears. "Smaller than Rogers. Smaller than Harrington."

He presses his hands against the wall and leans his forehead against it as he tries to ground himself. "Temba. Not the mall. Not Hawkins, not Indiana, safe. In the diner." He repeats that, shakily and trying to breathe.

"Yes," he repeats, trying to comfort him. "You're at the diner. You're in Temba. Not the mall. Not Hawkins. And I'm Steve Rogers. Smaller than usual. Looked like this before I joined the army. Bones are brittle, so, try not to fight me, all right?"

He does pour Billy that glass of water, and brings it over to him, putting it between them, on the floor. "Do you want me to talk to you, or is it better if you do all the talking?" he asks. At least it seems like the words are sinking in. He's fighting it.

The diner. Wrong Steve Rogers was in here. Not in Hawkins, not in the mall. The creature couldn't get him in here, it didn't know he was in here. Hopefully. There weren't any vines to drag him off.

Billy feels like he's going to shake right out of his skin and wheezes out a thing of air before sucking in a fresh breath of it. "We...we can talk. Might be better." He glances at the water suspiciously, and doesn't take it. Billy needs the water though, but he's not ready for it. The cold shower, the beating of the sunshine against him at the pool, the heat of the sauna around him.

Now, the teen wheezes harder, trying to fight the memories that threaten to rob him of breath and sanity.

"Hey - hey, okay, Billy, stay with me. Breathe, okay? Time your breaths to mine, it'll be easier." Easier said than done, too. Hopefully Steve doesn't have any sort of respiratory problems in the middle of all this.

"You're at the diner. You like it here. I think. Gives you something to do. You're training, with Gladio. Gotta get out your frustrations somehow. You've got a lot of anger, you need someplace to channel it. There's no mall. There's kind of a department store, but it's no Sears. We're definitely not in Indiana."

He does want to keep reassuring Billy he's not wherever his mind thinks he is. "You punched me pretty hard in the jaw. Twice. I'm choosing to let those go."

It all hurts. It doesn't really hurt, it's his brain and the fear playing tricks on it, but it does and it doesn't and he's so scared. Billy figured he had more time in this place before the flayer came after him. Or before he was sent back. His thoughts are becoming muddy and thick, hard to get through.

And there's Steve's voice, talking through it and getting through the thick of it. They're at the diner. He does kind of like it here. Radley and Tommy are good cooks. Training with Gladio. Right, big guy. Training him with an axe. Breathe in and out. Match Steve's breathing.

It's tough but he starts trying. Billy turns so he can actually look at this Wrong Steve, watching him and trying to match the pace of his breathing. "No mall. No Sears. Not in Indiana. Gladio....Gladio's teaching me to channel it through training." And meditating, but that hadn't been working lately. Well, it sort of had, but only on the beach.

The beach isn't safe right now. Or, not safe to get to.

"I did. I punched you hard. The Right Steve, not you. Could've punched you more but I was tired." He doesn't really sound remorseful about it, either. That was a work in progress, too.

"Uh-huh. You got a mean right hook, kid, but you really gotta be careful who you're swinging it at." He tries again with the water, offering it to Billy, holding it up for him. He thinks it might help, might calm him down, might ground him to take a drink of water.

But it seems that pulling on the thread of what little he knows about Billy is working, too. "And I don't go down easy. Easier, like this, but try not to test it." He keeps his breaths even, slow.

"Do you want to tell me about your friends?" he asks. He can't tell why their relationship is so strained - it seems to him that Billy's trying to push them away. That reminds him of half his team actually, but he knows if he were in the same position, he'd have loads to say about them.

Billy knows his punches are good, he was taught by a shield to a king. He turns to rest his back against the wall. This time he takes the glass of water. It feels cold and a cold shot of dread runs through him for an instant. He remembers cold showers, more screaming. Being pushed aside mentally and riding shotgun in his head.

Billy chugs the water down before he can think too much about it. It helps. It clears some of his thoughts about those cold showers and hot saunas and burning skin at the poolside.

The glass drops at the mention of friends, smashing against the tile. "I don’t fucking have any. Acquaintances from my world maybe, a couple here, and that’s about it. You wanna talk to people whore friends? Go find Harrington and Munson. Maybe they won’t treat you fucking stupid. Buckley‘s okay. She’s not a fucking Princess like Steve Harrington." There’s a lot of bitterness in his tone that either he can’t hide, or Billy makes no effort to hide.

Steve gets up slowly, to go get a dustpan and a brush, to get all the glass shards off the floor because they're sharp and he doesn't want Billy hurting himself.

"Don't know what you've got against them," Steve says. "But fine, what about Gladio?" Isn't he Billy's friend? Or Tommy, or Radley? Seems kind of lonely to ice everyone out like that, and Steve would know.

He'd just lost a whole mess of his friends all at once, and it'd been hard to let his heart be vulnerable enough to make more. But it'd been worth it, too.

There were a multitude of things that Billy could come up with and say, but they all get stuck. "Munson at least doesn't have shit taste in music. Buckley'll stick up for me maybe. Gladio's my teacher. Radley's nobody. Tommy... I guess he's a friend." Better than how Billy viewed most people.

He thinks back in the last week or so - it's hard to tell when you're pushed under your own consciousness in your head - in Hawkins. Before he was brought here. The pain of the sun on his skin. Seeing Max through the sauna room window. Seeing that strange girl before what Billy knew was the end. He doesn't remember seeing any of the other teens that were his age.

He knows what the problem is rooted in. Billy can't admit it out-loud. That no one his age even noticed anything was wrong, and he had been all alone then, too.

Billy shudders, thinking of that flayer that was waiting outside in the gates, how it tracked him down here from the mall. "That thing... in the gate. It's here to finish what the aliens saved me from."

"I know you think that, Billy, but I'm not gonna let that happen." Steve sounds extremely adamant about that as he cleans up the last of the glass, trying to make sure that nobody accidentally hurts themselves on any of it.

"We're gonna stay here and wait for it to pass." And then maybe Steve will go out and try to find another way to fight it besides hitting it straight on, since that isn't going to work out so well for him, he's pretty sure.

But right now, he can't leave Billy, so he'll hunker down and stay with him awhile. "Do you need more water? Space?" he asks.

The arrogance in Billy wants to kick the dustpan out of Steve's hand. Shower the glass everywhere. But God, he's so tired. So he doesn't kick or anything. He just stays against the far kitchen wall.

"It happens when I go home," and even though he breathes it out, there's anger in his tone. A hand presses at his midsection where he knows the ugly scarring is under the shirt. The lights of the kitchen catch small scarrings all of his hands, focused mainly at his wrists and finger where he held the creature back at one point. "Everyone can save me all they want. But it won't stop the inevitable, Rogers."

But he hasn't given up so bad yet that he just walks out to let the flayer finish the job.

Breathe in. Breathe out. "Water... water is good."

Steve goes to fetch him another glass, right after he disposes of all the shattered stuff. He needs Billy to be careful with this one though because he doesn't want to clean up another one but also because they have a limited amount of glasses.

"You can stay here," he says. "Or go somewhere else in the galaxy." He might not have to go back to that fate - he'd make peace with a fate where he dies, but he knows that no one else thinks the way he does, dooming himself to an icy grave for noble reasons.

"We can find a way to protect you." Of course Steve would think something is so simple. But he'd never taken no for an answer.

"Doesn't work like that," he corrects. He knows it doesn't. The aliens pull you out of your spot in time, then they put you back. He'll get put back and the final blow will hit. And Billy does not want to think about going somewhere else in a galaxy. Having an upside down version of Hawkins is bad enough.

This time the glass gets taken with a little more of a snatch than earlier.

He looks at Steve while taking a long drink. "Not that easy. Nothing's that fucking easy with this Upside Down bullshit or whatever the brats called it. No matter what you do or what you say, you can't change someone's fate, Rogers." There wasn't a power like that in his universe. Probably nobody's universe.

"Is that what you believe in?" he asks. "Fate?" Because Steve's asked himself this question about a thousand times. What does he believe in. Was he destined for something, or was that just a general fluke of the universe, or was there a guiding hand of the god he believes in, pushing him somewhere?

But all of that didn't matter because it led somewhere. It led to here. And if that's true, then: "If it's your fate to go back and die, why are you getting an extension?" he asks. Because maybe the whole point is that he's gotta fight it.

But Steve will also find a fight in everything.

"I don't believe in anything anymore." He lost his faith with his mom. Fate just meant an end to him. He knows there's no going somewhere else, no hiding in a different universe where it won't catch up to him. The others say that people get sent home.

His home just happens to be in the ground with made up headlines to cover up the real thing. A mall fire to cover up that Billy had created and brought a massive creature in to try and get one kid.

"I don't know why the fuck I'm living on borrowed time!" Billy doesn't mean to yell, he's just having a tough time emotionally right now. "Maybe the aliens think I'm fodder for all this bullshit, or useful, or something!" Billy doesn't get why Rogers is going to try and fight the inevitable. The blond is going to try and live while he can here, because it's over when he's home.

"And what if they do? Think you're useful, or fodder, or something?" He sits with Billy, and wonders if he ever just thinks how vast the universe is and how important it is to get a second chance.

"This is my second lease on life, too," he says, because maybe that'll be the thing that gets through to Billy, that Steve knows what that's like. And yeah, maybe he'd been a beloved hero when he'd died, but he'd been a nobody before that.

"And I don't think that's destiny. I don't think I run out of chances, Billy. I don't think you do, either."

"Why do you keep asking these questions like I fucking know or something? I don't know!" The fact of the matter was, to Billy, being in Temba was his second chance. There was no going somewhere else when the aliens were done with him. He had to be better and live here while he could because at any moment he could be sent back.

"All of my chances are here! Don't you get it? You little fucking stick, this IS MY CHANCE! I fucking mentioned fate but it's not that deep! I get skewered by some monster I fucking created!"

This time the glass gets thrown. And not at the floor, or wall, but Steve. Because he doesn't know how to process a lot of what's going on properly, and isn't in the right mindset to be doing it.

This time, Steve reaches up and catches the glass. It almost falls out of his hands, but he manages not to let it slip too hard, though he fumbles with it. "Okay. I'm not getting you any more of these."

Steve is wet now, and he stands up to put the glass away and wring out his shirt. What he wants to ask is, if Billy's so aware that this is his second chance, then why does he keep pushing everyone away?

But he doesn't. Because that's not going to amount to anything.

"You wanna tell me what happened? From the beginning?"

Those kind of questions are just going to incite more anger from Billy, who's not exactly in the right headspace to be answering them. Some of his worst fears are outside, so polite conversation is not here in the room with Billy and Steve.

He breathes hard, like he's just finished exercising, when Steve comes back and asks a different question. "I... I don't think I can." And that's the truth of it. "Being possessed, it was like I was asleep in the passenger seat of my car. I woke up and took the wheel once, then back to sleep."

Billy takes some breathes. In and out. "I can't tell much else."

Steve nods. "Okay," he says. He won't ask again. He'll remember. "I'm not gonna let that happen to you," he says. "You're in control."

He imagines that could be scary, getting possessed. He knows that happened to a couple good friends of his - getting totally brainwashed, carrying out things that they could see themselves doing, but being completely unable to stop themselves.

It's hard for them to deal with, so he imagines it'd be even harder for a kid with existing anger issues. "You're doing well," he says, because he really thinks, for all that's being thrown at him right now, that Billy is doing well.

Heaven's on Fire - KISS

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