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comment_fic on a theme of apocalypse/after-the-fall. The prompt was "Magnificent Seven, any or all, the morning after the big bang." I wasn't sure what was meant by 'big bang', so I went with something like an airburst meteor? Four Corners on the edges of the Tunguska blast, sort of thing. To warn in advance, Josiah gets the worst of this by far, and the ending doesn't really fix it.
Title: Under the Guns
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Characters/Pairings: Nathan, Ezra, Josiah, mention of a few of the others. Primarily Nathan & Ezra, with some Nathan & Josiah
Summary: The morning after the sky explodes, Nathan and Ezra try to pick themselves and each other up in the ruins of Four Corners and the wake of the horror the night before
Wordcount: 2069
Warnings/Notes: Natural disasters, aftermath, major character injury, mental breakdown, h/c, emotional h/c, grief/mourning, religious discussion, Civil War memories. Fanon backstories, particularly for Ezra.
Disclaimer: Not mine
comment_fic on a theme of apocalypse/after-the-fall. The prompt was "Magnificent Seven, any or all, the morning after the big bang." I wasn't sure what was meant by 'big bang', so I went with something like an airburst meteor? Four Corners on the edges of the Tunguska blast, sort of thing. To warn in advance, Josiah gets the worst of this by far, and the ending doesn't really fix it.Title: Under the Guns
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Characters/Pairings: Nathan, Ezra, Josiah, mention of a few of the others. Primarily Nathan & Ezra, with some Nathan & Josiah
Summary: The morning after the sky explodes, Nathan and Ezra try to pick themselves and each other up in the ruins of Four Corners and the wake of the horror the night before
Wordcount: 2069
Warnings/Notes: Natural disasters, aftermath, major character injury, mental breakdown, h/c, emotional h/c, grief/mourning, religious discussion, Civil War memories. Fanon backstories, particularly for Ezra.
Disclaimer: Not mine
Under the Guns
The dawn didn't look quite right. Nathan'd thought it was the dust that choked the saloon windows, at first, or maybe his own wavering eyesight under the sheer weight of exhaustion, but it wasn't. The tint to the sky, the high plume of darkness that clouded it even as the sun rose behind it, was all too real.
Guess he should have figured it would be. The whole damn sky falls on your head in a ball of flame, guess you ought to expect a little smoke to be rising come morning.
He felt his breath catch in his throat, a rough, raw sound right on the edge of a sob, and suddenly there was a presence at his elbow. A tired, concerned figure, dressed in the soot-stained remnants of a red coat, silently holding out a now equally battered hip flask. Nathan looked up, that raw thing knotted behind his adam's apple, and met Ezra's exhausted green eyes.
"... A libation, sir?" the gambler rasped, with a crooked sort of smile. "I'm told it helps some. Under the circumstances."
Nathan laughed. Surprising himself, shocking Ezra. It sounded about no better than the sob, but it was still a better noise to be making, he supposed. There were groans and cries and prayers enough to surround them as it was.
"And who told you that?" he asked, accepting the flask with a will and downing a swallow. He coughed, his raw throat entirely unprepared for Ezra's standard of libation, and snorted around the tearing of it. "Chris? Jo-- Josiah?"
His voice cracked on the name, only barely made it out, and Ezra flinched a little as well. Nathan's chest heaved, a gulp of air as searing as the gulp of alcohol, and looked away again. The dark corner beside the bar drew his eye, inevitably, inescapably, and the silent figure that sat there, rocking himself gently.
They'd found him that way. Eyes wide and staring blindly, blood trickling gently from a cut on his forehead, rocking to himself in the still-standing church. He'd not said a word so far. Hadn't seemed to register much at all. Nathan had looked at him, had crept careful fingers all over his skull looking for a cause, but if it had been a blow to the head that had felled Josiah, his tired hands hadn't found the evidence of it. There'd been no physical mark, beyond that small cut, and somewhere inside him Nathan nursed a raw terror that it had been no earthly wound that gnawed his friend.
Fire and brimstone from Heaven, and a shattering blow that felt like nothing so much as the end of the world. For Josiah, those things had a certain meaning, and shock, as much as anything else, could kill a man. He'd seen that. Too many times to count. He knew how fatal a blow that could be.
And he was as helpless against it as he was helpless against death and falling stars. He could patch the wounded back together as best he was able, he could pull a foot-long splinter from Vin's shoulder and fragments of half-burnt wood from the burns on JD's hip, he could even help bury the dead if nothing else, but the demons behind Josiah's eyes were beyond his reach to heal. His friend, though living, was as lost to him as if he'd died, and there was nothing Nathan could do about it.
"Nathan," Ezra said, and Nathan jumped at the touch of hands at his shoulders, flinched backwards into the window frame with a bolt of startled fear. Helplessness. Rage and helplessness, and the gnawing of old wounds, and Ezra ignored it. Ezra's eyes tightened in pain for the sight of it, but he only gentled his hands on Nathan's arms, and waited until he knew that Nathan saw him.
"It wasn't Josiah," Ezra said, and for a second Nathan didn't know what he meant. Ezra forced up a smile, made it light and crooked with all a conman's skill, and Nathan almost wept for the visible effort it took him, for the visible intent to soothe. "The libation? It wasn't Josiah who told me it was good for me. But I'm sure ... I'm sure he'll be happy to agree with me later. When he's back to himself. Don't you think?"
It was kindly meant. It was strained, and desperate, and so goddamn gently intended. A sound came from Nathan's throat, a noise he hadn't made since he was a young, young child, and a raw terror passed over Ezra's face. And then, behind it, a thin and willful determination, a fury born entirely of terror, that Nathan almost laughed at, he knew it so well.
"Don't you dare," Ezra told him, shaking him, but gently still. Carefully, and how long had Nathan dreamed, once, that someday he might be worth such care as a matter of course? "Dammit, Nathan! Don't you dare go the same way. I can fill the basins and carry the bandages, but like hell I can keep these people together by myself. Please. Please god, keep it together. We need you still." A tiny pause, and then, his accent thickening helplessly: "I need you still. One friend at a time is all and more than I can afford to lose."
"I know," Nathan rasped, reaching up to grip Ezra's arm with one hand, squeezing gently through the torn and grimy shirtsleeve. Ezra blinked at him, and Nathan managed something resembling a smile. "I know, Ezra. I'm here. I ain't leavin'. I promise."
There was something in those words, he thought, the key to some old wound, because what answered them in Ezra's face was a naked and entirely unwilling relief, so stark that both of them had to look away. Instantly, immediately. Ezra stood back a step, a stiff, rigid motion, and Nathan let go of his arm to allow it, pulling himself upright against the window frame while he was at it. Ezra backed up some more, stalking a little way off to lean against a wall and fidget unhappily with his ruined jacket, and Nathan for his part tried to scrub at exhausted eyes and maybe hide the wetness of them some.
For a long second, they stood there on opposite sides of dust-choked window, and the only sounds that broke their silence were the rustlings and low moans from the dozen wounded patients laid out around the room.
Then, suddenly, bizarrely, Ezra snorted to himself, a cracked little chuckle of amusement. Nathan looked over at him in amazement, and Ezra looked back, his eyes bright with a wry humour that wasn't nearly so close to hysteria as Nathan had feared. More the dark little appreciation for the poetic and ironic that Nathan saw in both Ezra and Josiah sometimes, and maybe a time or two in the mirror as well.
"... Somethin' funny?" he asked, with a careful little twitch of his lip to make it honestly asked and not condemning. Ezra shook his head, scrunching himself down onto the floor and wiggling a hand until Nathan remembered that he still had Ezra's flask and handed it back. The gambler accepted it with a bright flash of a grin and laid his head almost cheerfully back against the wall.
"Just an idle thought, my friend," he said, taking a swig and offering the flask once more. Nathan accepted it, and after a second's hesitation eased himself down beside Ezra as well. Just for good measure. The man welcomed him easily, a gentle elbow nudging at Nathan's ribs in greeting. "Entirely senseless, and without any redeeming virtues at all. Do forgive me."
Nathan huffed, glaring sideways at him. He contented himself with a small sip this time, the sloshing behind the metal indicating they'd have to go looking for better supplies soon if they wanted to make a proper drunk of it. For one of the few times in his life, Nathan was more than tempted.
"You can't just laugh out loud and then not say anything," he scolded, feeling oddly light and easy all of a sudden. Purged, maybe, and no longer quite alone. "Ain't you learned nothing from watching JD, Ezra?"
Ezra laughed softly, wordlessly conceding the point. He took the second last sip from the flask, and pressed it gently back into Nathan's hands. Something odd passed over him, a bright and hopeless sort of thing while he looked at Nathan, and then he smiled once more, as easy as if the other had never been.
"I was just thinking," he said. "Those meteors, or whatever they were. Judgement from on high, Josiah would say. It just occurred to me that maybe God ... is an artillery man. Heh. I don't reckon I ever thought I might have something in common with the Almighty, did you? But now here we are."
He shook his head, idly picking splinters out of the knees of his trousers. Something cold settled in Nathan's chest, seeping downwards at the look on the man's face, and he didn't take that last sip. Not just yet.
"I remember those battlefields, you know," Ezra murmured, slow and thoughtful, watching his own hands. "I remember what it looked like when we were through. I guess you do too. It reminded me. This, all this ... Y'understand? Makes me think of it. And I guess I'd hoped ... that if God had to turn out to be like anyone, that He'd be more like you. A man of mercy and of honour, putting people back together instead of tearing them apart." He leaned back, a light, exhausted humour, and turned his head to smile tiredly at Nathan. "I just ... I wish He'd picked the other side of the battlefield. I'd have much preferred a God like you than one like me. You know?"
Nathan shuddered, heart staggering around a weight in his chest, that place where he'd always tried to keep old angers hidden. He shuddered from the memory of Josiah's blind eyes, from the weight of old wounds and dark judgements, and then he reached out and ran his hand down Ezra's arm until he found the man's hand and wrapped it carefully in his own. Ezra blinked at him, mild and confused, but curled his fingers closed regardless.
"I don't think God's like either of us," Nathan said quietly. "I'm pretty sure we're both a little small for the part. But even if He is like you used to be. Even if He is on the side with the guns this time, you ain't, Ezra." He shook his head, squeezing lightly at the hand held captive in his own. "You're down here with me, remember? You're following me around trying to hold people together. Including me, if a few minutes ago is anything to go by. Whatever side of the field the Almighty happens to be on, Ezra, the side you're on these days is mine. I don't know if you think that makes you a better man or just a bigger fool ... but I reckon it's the truth. I trust that it's the truth. And I hope you do too."
And for a second Ezra said nothing, for a second Ezra just stared at him, but then that bright and poetic amusement filled his eyes again, and behind it a clear and weary sort of joy. He held Nathan's hand, and looked at him with honest joy.
"Mother always told me that good men and fools were more or less synonymous," he agreed, and far more happily than Nathan thought Maude would approve of. "If last night means we're doomed to stand under Heaven's guns, there's no-one I'd rather stand with, Mr Jackson. I always did end up on the losing side, somehow. At least this time it's in vastly better company."
"... And with that happy thought," Nathan muttered, shaking his head, but he downed the last of Ezra's brandy with a smile almost as wide as that of the man at his side, and left his hand where it was, held loosely in Ezra's own.
The morning after Heaven fell, the morning after the end of the world, he sat among the wounded in their little field hospital with Ezra by his side, and found the darkness in his heart and in morning sky just that little bit less oppressive than it had seemed a while ago.
The dawn didn't look quite right. Nathan'd thought it was the dust that choked the saloon windows, at first, or maybe his own wavering eyesight under the sheer weight of exhaustion, but it wasn't. The tint to the sky, the high plume of darkness that clouded it even as the sun rose behind it, was all too real.
Guess he should have figured it would be. The whole damn sky falls on your head in a ball of flame, guess you ought to expect a little smoke to be rising come morning.
He felt his breath catch in his throat, a rough, raw sound right on the edge of a sob, and suddenly there was a presence at his elbow. A tired, concerned figure, dressed in the soot-stained remnants of a red coat, silently holding out a now equally battered hip flask. Nathan looked up, that raw thing knotted behind his adam's apple, and met Ezra's exhausted green eyes.
"... A libation, sir?" the gambler rasped, with a crooked sort of smile. "I'm told it helps some. Under the circumstances."
Nathan laughed. Surprising himself, shocking Ezra. It sounded about no better than the sob, but it was still a better noise to be making, he supposed. There were groans and cries and prayers enough to surround them as it was.
"And who told you that?" he asked, accepting the flask with a will and downing a swallow. He coughed, his raw throat entirely unprepared for Ezra's standard of libation, and snorted around the tearing of it. "Chris? Jo-- Josiah?"
His voice cracked on the name, only barely made it out, and Ezra flinched a little as well. Nathan's chest heaved, a gulp of air as searing as the gulp of alcohol, and looked away again. The dark corner beside the bar drew his eye, inevitably, inescapably, and the silent figure that sat there, rocking himself gently.
They'd found him that way. Eyes wide and staring blindly, blood trickling gently from a cut on his forehead, rocking to himself in the still-standing church. He'd not said a word so far. Hadn't seemed to register much at all. Nathan had looked at him, had crept careful fingers all over his skull looking for a cause, but if it had been a blow to the head that had felled Josiah, his tired hands hadn't found the evidence of it. There'd been no physical mark, beyond that small cut, and somewhere inside him Nathan nursed a raw terror that it had been no earthly wound that gnawed his friend.
Fire and brimstone from Heaven, and a shattering blow that felt like nothing so much as the end of the world. For Josiah, those things had a certain meaning, and shock, as much as anything else, could kill a man. He'd seen that. Too many times to count. He knew how fatal a blow that could be.
And he was as helpless against it as he was helpless against death and falling stars. He could patch the wounded back together as best he was able, he could pull a foot-long splinter from Vin's shoulder and fragments of half-burnt wood from the burns on JD's hip, he could even help bury the dead if nothing else, but the demons behind Josiah's eyes were beyond his reach to heal. His friend, though living, was as lost to him as if he'd died, and there was nothing Nathan could do about it.
"Nathan," Ezra said, and Nathan jumped at the touch of hands at his shoulders, flinched backwards into the window frame with a bolt of startled fear. Helplessness. Rage and helplessness, and the gnawing of old wounds, and Ezra ignored it. Ezra's eyes tightened in pain for the sight of it, but he only gentled his hands on Nathan's arms, and waited until he knew that Nathan saw him.
"It wasn't Josiah," Ezra said, and for a second Nathan didn't know what he meant. Ezra forced up a smile, made it light and crooked with all a conman's skill, and Nathan almost wept for the visible effort it took him, for the visible intent to soothe. "The libation? It wasn't Josiah who told me it was good for me. But I'm sure ... I'm sure he'll be happy to agree with me later. When he's back to himself. Don't you think?"
It was kindly meant. It was strained, and desperate, and so goddamn gently intended. A sound came from Nathan's throat, a noise he hadn't made since he was a young, young child, and a raw terror passed over Ezra's face. And then, behind it, a thin and willful determination, a fury born entirely of terror, that Nathan almost laughed at, he knew it so well.
"Don't you dare," Ezra told him, shaking him, but gently still. Carefully, and how long had Nathan dreamed, once, that someday he might be worth such care as a matter of course? "Dammit, Nathan! Don't you dare go the same way. I can fill the basins and carry the bandages, but like hell I can keep these people together by myself. Please. Please god, keep it together. We need you still." A tiny pause, and then, his accent thickening helplessly: "I need you still. One friend at a time is all and more than I can afford to lose."
"I know," Nathan rasped, reaching up to grip Ezra's arm with one hand, squeezing gently through the torn and grimy shirtsleeve. Ezra blinked at him, and Nathan managed something resembling a smile. "I know, Ezra. I'm here. I ain't leavin'. I promise."
There was something in those words, he thought, the key to some old wound, because what answered them in Ezra's face was a naked and entirely unwilling relief, so stark that both of them had to look away. Instantly, immediately. Ezra stood back a step, a stiff, rigid motion, and Nathan let go of his arm to allow it, pulling himself upright against the window frame while he was at it. Ezra backed up some more, stalking a little way off to lean against a wall and fidget unhappily with his ruined jacket, and Nathan for his part tried to scrub at exhausted eyes and maybe hide the wetness of them some.
For a long second, they stood there on opposite sides of dust-choked window, and the only sounds that broke their silence were the rustlings and low moans from the dozen wounded patients laid out around the room.
Then, suddenly, bizarrely, Ezra snorted to himself, a cracked little chuckle of amusement. Nathan looked over at him in amazement, and Ezra looked back, his eyes bright with a wry humour that wasn't nearly so close to hysteria as Nathan had feared. More the dark little appreciation for the poetic and ironic that Nathan saw in both Ezra and Josiah sometimes, and maybe a time or two in the mirror as well.
"... Somethin' funny?" he asked, with a careful little twitch of his lip to make it honestly asked and not condemning. Ezra shook his head, scrunching himself down onto the floor and wiggling a hand until Nathan remembered that he still had Ezra's flask and handed it back. The gambler accepted it with a bright flash of a grin and laid his head almost cheerfully back against the wall.
"Just an idle thought, my friend," he said, taking a swig and offering the flask once more. Nathan accepted it, and after a second's hesitation eased himself down beside Ezra as well. Just for good measure. The man welcomed him easily, a gentle elbow nudging at Nathan's ribs in greeting. "Entirely senseless, and without any redeeming virtues at all. Do forgive me."
Nathan huffed, glaring sideways at him. He contented himself with a small sip this time, the sloshing behind the metal indicating they'd have to go looking for better supplies soon if they wanted to make a proper drunk of it. For one of the few times in his life, Nathan was more than tempted.
"You can't just laugh out loud and then not say anything," he scolded, feeling oddly light and easy all of a sudden. Purged, maybe, and no longer quite alone. "Ain't you learned nothing from watching JD, Ezra?"
Ezra laughed softly, wordlessly conceding the point. He took the second last sip from the flask, and pressed it gently back into Nathan's hands. Something odd passed over him, a bright and hopeless sort of thing while he looked at Nathan, and then he smiled once more, as easy as if the other had never been.
"I was just thinking," he said. "Those meteors, or whatever they were. Judgement from on high, Josiah would say. It just occurred to me that maybe God ... is an artillery man. Heh. I don't reckon I ever thought I might have something in common with the Almighty, did you? But now here we are."
He shook his head, idly picking splinters out of the knees of his trousers. Something cold settled in Nathan's chest, seeping downwards at the look on the man's face, and he didn't take that last sip. Not just yet.
"I remember those battlefields, you know," Ezra murmured, slow and thoughtful, watching his own hands. "I remember what it looked like when we were through. I guess you do too. It reminded me. This, all this ... Y'understand? Makes me think of it. And I guess I'd hoped ... that if God had to turn out to be like anyone, that He'd be more like you. A man of mercy and of honour, putting people back together instead of tearing them apart." He leaned back, a light, exhausted humour, and turned his head to smile tiredly at Nathan. "I just ... I wish He'd picked the other side of the battlefield. I'd have much preferred a God like you than one like me. You know?"
Nathan shuddered, heart staggering around a weight in his chest, that place where he'd always tried to keep old angers hidden. He shuddered from the memory of Josiah's blind eyes, from the weight of old wounds and dark judgements, and then he reached out and ran his hand down Ezra's arm until he found the man's hand and wrapped it carefully in his own. Ezra blinked at him, mild and confused, but curled his fingers closed regardless.
"I don't think God's like either of us," Nathan said quietly. "I'm pretty sure we're both a little small for the part. But even if He is like you used to be. Even if He is on the side with the guns this time, you ain't, Ezra." He shook his head, squeezing lightly at the hand held captive in his own. "You're down here with me, remember? You're following me around trying to hold people together. Including me, if a few minutes ago is anything to go by. Whatever side of the field the Almighty happens to be on, Ezra, the side you're on these days is mine. I don't know if you think that makes you a better man or just a bigger fool ... but I reckon it's the truth. I trust that it's the truth. And I hope you do too."
And for a second Ezra said nothing, for a second Ezra just stared at him, but then that bright and poetic amusement filled his eyes again, and behind it a clear and weary sort of joy. He held Nathan's hand, and looked at him with honest joy.
"Mother always told me that good men and fools were more or less synonymous," he agreed, and far more happily than Nathan thought Maude would approve of. "If last night means we're doomed to stand under Heaven's guns, there's no-one I'd rather stand with, Mr Jackson. I always did end up on the losing side, somehow. At least this time it's in vastly better company."
"... And with that happy thought," Nathan muttered, shaking his head, but he downed the last of Ezra's brandy with a smile almost as wide as that of the man at his side, and left his hand where it was, held loosely in Ezra's own.
The morning after Heaven fell, the morning after the end of the world, he sat among the wounded in their little field hospital with Ezra by his side, and found the darkness in his heart and in morning sky just that little bit less oppressive than it had seemed a while ago.
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